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.

noted that he doesn't actually say "n-word" but uses the actual word

Wins are rare and deserve to be commemorated:the high court dismissed the terf's attempts to prevent trans ppl from using the changing rooms for the Hampstead Heath ponds.

The ponds are truly one of the wonders of London and I'm happy everyone will continue to be able to use them without the genitals inspectors getting in the way.

Yup, a nice bit of good news

I'd thought that it was more a technical "this is not the appropriate court" finding, though I could definitely be wrong (and of course the genital inspectors would relish a bigger court)

Definitely good news though: the consultation where 86% supported the current trans-inclusive arrangement (and the same percent opposed the "biological sex only" option) https://news.cityoflondon.gov.uk/consultation-results-published-on-hampstead-heath-bathing-ponds/

Naturally Sex Matters had previously filed for judicial review of CLC's operation of the ponds on the grounds that the non-transphobic options were illegal.

“Sex Matters” is the name of an anti-trans group? oy vey

Yes, dunno if you are aware but a big terf thing is to try to take focus away from gender (socially constructed) and instead focus on sex (biological). This is of course nonsense for many reasons both philosophical and biological.

Been reading some posts on the Autogyniphiles Anonymous substack and getting very confused/angry about what I consider to be pretty heinous gender essentialism. Anyone follow this account?

Anyway, so much of the most recent posts is arguing that yaoi and shows like Heated Rivalry are a tool of patriarchy for making women believe that men have inner lives. And then using totally anecdotal evidence to back up these arguments, along with pretty rudimentary theory.

I know, it’s not like I need to pay attention to this stuff, but I am genuinely like “people really think this way??!!!!???”

The most obsessed Heated Rivalry fan in my circle, a close friend who occasionally posted here many years ago, is a trans person.

Anyway, so much of the most recent posts is arguing that yaoi and shows like Heated Rivalry are a tool of patriarchy for making women believe that men have inner lives.

This is why we can't have nice things.

could somebody please stop the new york times

:(

Is there a way to know what the NYT is on about without actually giving them clicks?

jesse singal doing his thing in an op-ed

Had to read up on him just now. Ugh.

Also surprised/not surprised that Dan Savage is super gross on trans stuff (I haven't read him since the 00's).

How are these people so obsessed with this topic?

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sends-letters-to-trans-people

the Kansas news is pretty scary

https://bsky.app/profile/tpwrtrmnky.bsky.social/post/3mfrboxfijs2y

Abolish the legal gender marker entirely. No government can be trusted to have a database of which people have changed theirs, no government has any business tracking what your gender is "supposed" to be in the first place.

^^^yeah

OTM

U.S. passports didn't even have gender markers until 1977. They were added, says this article, because of "the rise of unisex fashion and hair styles."

blame carter

I'm at a loss to fathom why the fuck they are bothering with this... maybe they don't want trans women getting two-for-one drink specials on ladies night?

or maybe it's just pure intimidation for its own sake

the cruelty is the point

cruelty, intimidation, disenfranchising voters likely to swing democrat, testing how easily the government can unofficially revoke citizenship, etc

the cruelty is the point

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Thursday, February 26, 2026 10:34 AM (two hours ago)

this. they think being trans is a social ill and they are going to great lengths to try and "cure" it. same thing with abortion, same thing with homosexuality, same thing with black men who aren't in prison...

there's not really a future to what they're doing, not really a future who seem to genuinely believe that if you make your enemies disappear life will be great again, but they don't particularly seem to understand that.

They just gotta hold out until the rapture.

i mean yes "the cruelty is the point" but it's also undoing legal recognition of their chosen gender. they can't drive a car unless they capitulate to having the wrong gender on their license. plus licenses are used as legal identification in other situations. it's the same bullshit as passports, my son can't travel outside of the country unless he agrees to have the wrong gender on his passport, which aside from being psychologically difficult, could easily cause confusion at airports when his passport says "female" but he looks like a teen dude. it's cruelty but it's also literally making being openly transgender illegal.

How are these people so obsessed with this topic?

I've thought a lot about scapegoat psychology, it's so recurrent and seemingly indefatigable. The need to have an accepted group to hate and abuse. Of course, lots of people don't just stop with one group they hate, but it seems like there always has to be kind of a central focus or two. Go back to 2004 and it's Muslims and gay people. In 2026, it's immigrants and trans people (with the rest of the LGBTQ spectrum just behind of course). There's tremendous political power in it, clearly, which is why politicians are so drawn to it. But the groups have to be sufficiently powerless to make them a safe target and not generate political blowback. First slavery and then desegregation were eventually felled because popular will turned against them. The same thing happened in a different way with the growing visibility and sympathy for queer people that led up to Obergefell. So then trans people — an even smaller, even more misunderstood group — became the next target. Immigrants have often filled the role in fluctuating fashion, and are always an attractive target because they can't vote and have limited legal protections.

I really feel like conservative politics essentially can't function without the scapegoat mechanism, it's part of what drives it, because so much of conservatism is protecting something — some sense of identity or heritage — against sinister encroaching forces.

yeah then they tried to jump on the furries thing and the classroom litter boxes and everyone was like 'what? the fuck you talking about?'

That one didn't gain much traction

so here's my problem with the new york times

my family (aunts, uncles, etc.) are super supportive but they're also old school liberals, which means that they _fiercely_ support me, but they also subscribe to the new york times and think the new york times also supports trans people.

it's really awkward... they're seniors at this point, you know, and i don't think i can convincingly make the case to them that the new york times is bad actually

anyway they'll send me these transphobic articles that they either haven't read or haven't particularly understood, because they think these articles actually _support_ trans people. it's a minor irritation that's more than offset by the fact that they genuinely do care about me and support me, standing behind me matters a lot more than what j3ss3 s1ng4l is saying this week. i see this a lot in practice... the papers will say one thing and it doesn't accord at all with how people who subscribe to those papers _act_.

is there a little wiggle room there to convince them that while the nyt is generally erudite and liberal and compassionate or whatever, this specific area is a blind spot for them?

I've had that argument with my dad, who has been generally queer-supportive for decades but got kinda worked up about trans athletes — which I know 100 percent came from the Times, because he reads the Times and never engages at all with any kind of right-wing media. I have tried to get him to understand that the Times has been part of this whole trans panic that originated on the Christian right — an argument that would generally resonate with him, because he hates the Christian right — but it was already embedded with him as a "legitimate concern." So it is absolutely true that the NYT has been a force for legitimizing transphobia for a lot of people who were not going to be reached by Matt Walsh or Fox News.

I've had that argument with my dad, who has been generally queer-supportive for decades but got kinda worked up about trans athletes — which I know 100 percent came from the Times, because he reads the Times and never engages at all with any kind of right-wing media. I have tried to get him to understand that the Times has been part of this whole trans panic that originated on the Christian right — an argument that would generally resonate with him, because he hates the Christian right — but it was already embedded with him as a "legitimate concern." So it is absolutely true that the NYT has been a force for legitimizing transphobia for a lot of people who were not going to be reached by Matt Walsh or Fox News.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Thursday, March 5, 2026 7:33 AM (four hours ago)

it is and it's worrisome because that is what happened in the uk, the media there does see transphobia as legitimate, and it's incredibly, massively fucked up. god knows what's going to wind up happening there. the times... i don't feel a need to convince people because newspaper media is a generational thing. i fully expect nyt-style liberalism to die out as a force before fascism does. the thing is that i don't really feel like the NYT has changed... it's just that my relatives have changed and grown. this whole "i didn't leave the democratic party, the democratic party left me" reagan-era bullshit, i never bought it. it's good to change. it's good to leave things in the past. i don't want to convince my relatives that "the new york times is good EXCEPT FOR" because i don't believe it. i don't believe the new york times is an effective social force for good, i don't think newspapers are an effective social force for good. we're encouraged to talk and talk and talk and my relatives are _showing up for what they believe in_, and what they believe in includes trans rights. i don't have to convince them of shit. i'm really grateful for that.

Got it, that is a good thing. i misunderstood you a bit. I was imagining that the nyt was turning them away from being an ally, in which case it might be worth it to (disingenuously) affirm the authority of the times to establish a shared perspective, from which you could then highlight their stance on trans issues as an exception, without having to rock their world by tearing down the mainstream liberal news media as generally not a thing to be trusted.

I definitely see the insidious influence of these narratives all around. One of my closest coworkers is a progressive lesbian whose gender expression is fairly androgynous, but she’s a huge athlete — plays and coaches multiple sports — and she has commented to me on how trans women playing sports creates dissonance with her competitive instincts, something that would likely not be on her radar were people not constantly fearmongering about it. Ugh

I definitely see the insidious influence of these narratives all around. One of my closest coworkers is a progressive lesbian whose gender expression is fairly androgynous, but she’s a huge athlete — plays and coaches multiple sports — and she has commented to me on how trans women playing sports creates dissonance with her competitive instincts, something that would likely not be on her radar were people not constantly fearmongering about it. Ugh

― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Thursday, March 5, 2026 12:34 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago)

so the paradox here is that i think it's important for people to confront our own biases. if someone feels uncomfortable with trans women playing sports, i think it's good for someone to acknowledge that to themselves, at least... it's an opportunity to think about why that is. i was transphobic in a lot of ways when i was younger, and i still struggle with internalized transphobia. this idea that someone's a "bad person" if they have a hard time thinking of a trans woman as a woman - that's not, to me, a helpful way of framing it. that's one of the reasons it's important to me to be out. because a lot of times the only visible trans people are trans people who don't pass. so if someone can look at a trans woman who doesn't have passing much passing privilege and admit that they think of that person as a man, that gives me the opportunity to say hey, ok, do you think of _me_ as a man. which, particularly if they see me in person, they're not going to. and then one becomes, hopefully, open to the question of "ok, why do i think of kate as a woman, but not Sally Brickhon?" that's how prejudices get broken down.

the important thing, for me, is the ability to ask oneself uncomfortable questions _without immediately needing to answer them_.

this week i've decided to be pretentious and start referring to my 2 am rambles as "matinposting". makes it seem normal that i can't sleep through the night because of the nightmares. it's not, but it's not something i can do much about right now, so i'll take _feeling_ normal (individually, as opposed to "normalisation") as a consolation prize

the following (hopefully behind the cut) is a lengthy and very skippable preamble to the thing i want to actually talk about. slurs, but then there are slurs after the cut as well, so be advised.

this and bsky are about the only places where i will refer to myself as a "faggot". it's Old Internet, it's edgelord (call me no edgelord, for i am an edgelady) culture, it's stuff that Just Isn't Done these days, which is why i really only do it here. it's my inner holden caulfield. i'm sick of the hypocritical bullshit. i'm sick of "phonies". i don't like it when people treat me like a faggot but won't call me a "faggot". if people are gonna treat me that way, i'll call myself a "faggot", because it makes them uncomfortable.

nobody on ilx treats me that way, of course. it is, in some sense, rather rude of me to refer to myself as such in the company of people who very decidedly do _not_ treat me that way. it's important, though. it's important that cis people understand that all of this transphobic rhetoric is just so much smoke and mirrors. transphobes aren't offended that i'm a woman. they're offended that i'm a _faggot_.

i call myself a faggot: first, because i believe that i can, i believe that i do have the right to that word. if anybody else calls me a faggot without my permission i will use my words and i will cut them. i am not going to call anybody else, personally, a faggot. i am not going to call myself a faggot in trans spaces, because other trans people don't need to hear that word. they know how we're treated, whether i use the word or not.

second, because i don't think there's anything _wrong_ with being a faggot. the idea of "faggot" as a slur is just kind of ridiculous to me. yeah, it's offensive to _call_ somebody else a faggot, but it's not offensive to actually _be_ a faggot. genuinely, there's nothing wrong with that. it's just a derogatory word for "gay". i'd no more be offended by it that i would be if someone called me a "mick" or a "papist". they're clearly meant as slurs, but there's, like, nothing wrong with being either of the things those slurs refer to.

"mick" and "papist" are also like "faggot" in that none of these terms are really _accurate_ ways to describe me. i'm a white american. my great-great grandfather came over from county clare with a chip on his shoulder because he didn't want to be a fucking priest and died in an asylum. he didn't think of himself as "irish" and didn't like being called "irish", he was a fucking american. he was, of course, also irish, just as much as i'm an american.

technically i'm catholic. i'm catholic the way people who get copies of rolling stone that they haven't asked for or paid for are "subscribers". it's not about _me_, it's about boosting the circ numbers to look good to the advertisers. just cuz i've joined a couple of different religions since then, just because i don't do any catholic shit, doesn't make me not catholic, in their eyes. i'm just not catholic in anyone _else's_ eyes. (to be fair, i'm much more marked by having raised catholic than i am by having been a rolling stone subscriber.)

and yeah, i'm not actually a gay man. it's always been kind of a difficult thing for trans women. of course we don't want to be treated like men, but a lot of us do _want_ men. straight men just... they just feel like a lost cause. i tell a straight man i'm trans and he either stops being interested or starts being _very_ interested and neither response is really a good one. i don't tell a straight man i'm trans and i run the risk of him killing me when he finds out. gay men... look, and effeminate man _isn't_ the same thing as a woman with a penis, and a lot of gay men are only interested in the former, not the latter. i respect that, and i also, as a queer person, understand that being queer is _complicated_. as a queer person, i try (with limited success) to not get hung up on labels, and i know a lot of other queer people are that way too.

---

it's the fucking bryon noem thing. it's weird, is what it is. nobody's gonna report in the press "oh hey bryon noem is a faggot", but people are happy to say that he's been outed as a "sissy". whether or not he refers to himself as a "sissy" isn't of any particular account. that republican congressman from montana or whatever who was "cottaging", having anonymous sex with men in public restrooms - when that was reported in the press nobody said "oh larry whatshisface is a faggot". some people did say he was "gay", which i'm not sure is technically true, i think he was more of an "MSM" - man who has sex with men, and the more accurate reporting did focus on what he did rather than talk about his identity. some people of course will have suspicions about a straight man who has sex with men in public toilets, and i'll cop to being one of those people, and my judgements say more about me than they do about him.

there's always been this sort of tension, when it comes to AMAB gender nonconformity, between "sissies" and "faggots", this idea that you have to be one or the other. the alleged line is that sissies like themselves and faggots like men. i wanted to say "sissies like women and faggots like men", but no, that's not the pseudoscientific norm. the norm was codified by an amateur performer of medieval music named ray blanchard, and is still in fact taken very very seriously by some cis people but is taken most seriously, in my experience, by self-loathing Very Online queers who may or may not have spent time on 4chan. my understanding is that under blanchard, "sissies" are known as "AGP", which i thought stood for "advanced gaming port" in 2019, and "faggots" are "HST", which i thought was a US Robotics "high speed" (in 1990s terms) modem protocol in 2019. pseudoscience. balderdash. sissies and faggots. that's what we are, and there's nothing actually wrong with either of these things. they're not truly distinct, but yeah, they're not quite the same thing.

maybe there are still people like, i don't know, larry whathisface from montana, MSMs, but they don't get the press these days. the ones who get the press are sissies. contemporary liberal-minded people aren't going to allow ourselves to get upset by a man having sex with another man, but we - i very definitely don't exclude myself - aren't held to the same social standard when it comes to sissies. the truth is that i don't respect them enough to be disgusted by them. because that is what they want, a lot of them, to be treated as if they're sick and shameful and wrong, and really they just aren't. i don't think it makes any more sense to call someone else a "sissy" than it does to call them a "faggot", no matter what they call themselves.

of course, the big difference is that sissies, these days, do often act more entitled, do more often behave in socially inappropriate ways. sucking cock in a public men's room is socially inappropriate. that's the real issue. if i'm going into the restroom to take a leak, i don't want to walk in on a blowjob in progress. that's simple common courtesy. yes i _know_ it's hot, and i know nothing i say is gonna stop people of whatever gender from doing it. what i'm saying is that it's socially inappropriate, and if you get caught, you gotta take your lumps for it.

the larger issue is that it's the only way republican congressmen are _allowed_ to do MSM. they gotta be secretive and hypocritical and make a big show of hating the queers. people who are queer and promiscuous, i mean, we fucking know how they are. we know what happens on grindr every time the republicans are in town. i don't care what they do on their own time but they have nothing i want, and mostly they just get in the way.

yeah nobody hates us more than the fucking sissies. for real. because we ruin it for them. we ruin their orgasms. they think about us and it's not what they want to fantasize about, not what they want to be. they don't want to be normal, healthy queers. they want to have shameful toilet sex. and the only way they can do that is by making a world where that's all that's _possible_. a world where that's all queer people _can_ do. these people insist on defining what they do for _everybody_ in _their_ terms alone, not gay but "MSM", not trans but "sissies".

and of course i'm like them. i'm as much a sissy as i am a faggot. sure, i'm a "normal, healthy queer", and i am, in fact, a weirdo pervert freak, in ways that are, in fact, _not_ socially offensive, that do _not_ rely on me nonconsensually involving other people in my sexual behavior. i'm tired of having my sexual desires judged by the standards of their bullshit. there are lots of queer men and most of them don't routinely whip out their cock on set like john barrowman did. there are lots of trans women and most of us don't go around flashing our undies at people. i'm tired of having my sexuality being seen as a subset of their behavior. i'm tired of people acting like there's something wrong with looking at ourselves in a mirror and saying "would you fuck me? i'd fuck me." that's normal, actually, whoever you are, whatever anatomy one has, no matter how badly people like bryon noem want it to _not_ be normal.

tl;dr - if you wouldn't call someone a "faggot", don't call someone else a "sissy". no matter what they call themselves. no matter what fucked up shit they do. even if it's _not_ "queer", it has the same sort of relationship with queerness as the behavior of "MSMs" has with male homosexuality.

There’s quite a vast space between “shameful toilet sex” and the reasons behind why many gay men find it hot, fwiw.

Like it isn’t about shame— it’s about exposure and being caught breaking social norms in such a way. It’s related to exhibitionism.

George Michael was quite eloquent about saying so.

There’s quite a vast space between “shameful toilet sex” and the reasons behind why many gay men find it hot, fwiw.

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Sunday, April 5, 2026 4:41 AM (one hour ago)

thank you for confirming that, it's something i believe but didn't have the ability to articulate. that's why when i talked about shame it was specifically in the context of MSMs. i don't think toilet sex is something to be ashamed of and i don't shame people for doing it! honestly i'd really like to hear gay men talk about what that difference is like for _them_. because i _know_ there is a difference, it maps pretty well onto certain experience i've had as a trans woman, but i can't speak to those differences because i just don't have that lived experience. hell if someone can just link to what george michael said, i think that'd be cool as well. as a queer person, a lot of how i experience myself is stuff that i learned from cis gay men, who _are_ positive role models, in general, or me.

to me this is sort of related to the ongoing "kink at pride" Discourse, whether or not kink _should_ or _should not_ be at pride, and it's not even a question for me. of course kink fucking belongs at pride. why would anybody even say it doesn't? it's part of who we are. it's more a matter of decorum. like... i had a friend who worked at the humane society, and one of the things that happened was that a furry group asked if they could come visit, to which the answer was god, yes, we'd love it if you visited, just please don't wear your fursuits, because it freaks out the animals. there _is_ nuance here. there _are_ questions of social decorum.

the complicating factor, i think, is that there's often a disproportionate response to people being caught doing that, as well as the fact that bigoted cops _do_ things like stake out toilet stalls trying to bust people having sex in public toilets in ways that really, genuinely, aren't doing any social harm. it's kinda the same way with paul reubens getting busted for masturbating in a porno theater. who the fuck is prioritizing arresting people for masturbating in porno theaters? it's funny, i don't remember anybody ever saying what _kind_ of porn was being shown at that theater. we all know who gets disproportionately targeted, though, when they go after stuff like that. nobody was outing reubens, but they _were_ arresting him and, well, literally cancelling him for jacking off to gay porn in a porno theater.

it's a fucking con. that's the thing of it. it's a big fucking con. these assholes are out there doing queer shit in grossly unsafe and nonconsensual ways while insisting that they're not queer - which frankly is fine by me because i don't think people who routinely behave in grossly unsafe and nonconsensual ways _should_ be welcome in queer community, no matter who they are - and then using _their own_ bullshit behavior as a pretext for regulating behavior that isn't actually a problem. what i've learned is that if everything is a problem, nothing is a problem, and the people who are causing the very, very serious problems know that, relish that, and exploit that.

kink belongs at pride. cops shouldn't fucking be staking out bathrooms to try and bust people having sex in the toilets. we as queer people should be empowered to be able to call out problem behavior when we see it without making sweeping judgements on the _character_ of the people involved. we know who the people causing problems in the queer community are. i don't have a problem with queer self-loathing. well, i have a personal problem with queer self-loathing, in that i'm queer and self-loathing, but i don't have a problem with other people doing queer shit and choosing to hate themselves for it. it's when they try to create a world where queer self-loathing is _mandatory_...

like, these people, self-loathing is a fetish they have, shame is a fetish they have, and they're trying to inflict that fetish on the rest of us. the way "sissy" discourse is used is part and parcel of that process. do i hold them responsible for my queer self-loathing? nah, that's my shit now, i own that. my problem is that their sissy fetish is getting in the way of my sex life. it has done for all of my life, but the problem has become _much more acute_ in these past couple of years.

whether or not the people creating this dystopia are, individual, sissies, that's not relevant, any more than it matters whether any individual pushing homophobic legislation is MSM. what is increasingly clear to me, though, is that transphobic legislation is part of a larger political program, and part of that program is, well, forced sissification. they don't have the fucking _right_. we should be the ones in control of that. not them.

tl;dr the "top shortage" in transfem communities is an insidious tool of patriarchal white supremacist capitalist oppression

god these people are really interested in other people's business... fucking hell

Bans on medical transition comprise just one part of the larger, unprecedented assault on transgender rights mounted by a coordinated campaign of mostly conservative activists and policymakers in the US in recent years. So far, these restrictions have primarily affected minors. But leaders in the emboldened movement have begun to more openly admit their desire to attempt to end gender-affirming care for adults, too.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/17/children-gender-affirming-trans-care-trump

i'm not saying this to be snarky, i know it might come off that way - i genuinely am relieved that more people are starting to catch on. back in '23 i was worried that people would just, i don't know, let us all die. i don't see that happening now. it's awkward because probably a lot of people are going to be coming to the realization in the coming years of what was happening under their noses and that they didn't, like, notice, and i'm just not remotely interested in blaming or shaming people or saying what they _should_ have done. because there's gonna be a whole huge number of people who are going to be reckoning with the absolute horror of it and i don't really want to wag my finger at anyone while they're doing that, you know? there are all kinds of horrifying realizations to be had and i don't think that trans people necessarily need to get priority over any other marginalized group - there's plenty of horror to go around.

again, not being snarky at all, not trying to be lighthearted or dismissive at all. just real shit.

Ugh our state Legislature wrapped up a session full of trans-bashing bills with a law that makes it illegal for any local government to recognize or provide anti-discrimination protections based on gender identity. All of the five largest cities in the state currently include "gender identity" in their anti-discrimination ordinances for city employees. This new law will force them to delete that language or face civil lawsuits. I'd like to think one or more of them might fight it in court, but they're all so battered by the state over a zillion other things that I don't know if they will.

Just insane, the level of hatred.

ok trying to repost, cloudflare blocked this earlier

Just insane, the level of hatred.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, April 22, 2026 1:24 PM (three days ago)

that really is it, the hatred is insane. not just the intensity of it... america at least has always had this level of fervent hatred... but the way it's being implemented.

i was watching this video but atun-shei films, and one of the things he talks about and is pretty insightful about is how this situation is different from the situation in america in 1860. in 1860 white america was pretty strongly divided on a geographic basis - white people in the south had one set of beliefs about slavery, and white people in the north...

well, that's an interesting thing now that i type it, there were plenty of pro-slavery white people in the north, but if there was an anti-slavery contingent of white people in the south, they didn't have a voice. it's not enough to write bigotry into law - that bigotry has to be universally accepted. i relate a lot to dr. king's frustration with white liberals, because for liberals choosing to _not fight_ for someone else is always an option. i don't even necessarily blame liberals for that or think that they're, individually, necessarily _wrong_ per se. it's just frustrating.

one of the things that's hardest for me to talk about is the way all of this extreme bigoted stuff that's happening now, that was just, like, _reality_ for all of us 30 years ago. by "us" i don't mean trans people, i mean _people_. nobody, myself included, listened to trans people, took trans people seriously, and now these bigots in state government are trying to, like, mandate hatred, and it just... it doesn't _work_. you can't force someone to hate trans people, it doesn't matter _what_ you put into law. they can make it illegal for local governments to protect us against discrimination and of _course_ that matters.

it's not just a matter of laws, though. i've been around long enough to know that there's such a thing as, you know, malicious compliance. people acting like they're complying with the regulations, but doing it in a way that doesn't actually support the people being protected by them. if a law protects me but the people who are in charge of enforcing that law don't want to protect me, well, the extent to which that law protects me is pretty limited.

well of course it works the other way around too. these brainrotted bigots are really upset that people aren't on-board with their bigotry and think if they make a law to mandate it everybody will fall in line, and what i've found is that no, actually, the more blatantly bigoted they get the more people support us and the more _passionately_ people support us. a certain subset of kids are internalizing this extreme form of bigotry that isn't ever going to fucking work, and i feel bad for those kids, but so many people are just... fucking horrified, rightly, at the insane bullshit these governments are trying to mandate.

i guess all the red states have now made it a felony for me to take a piss, or something. what do they expect us to do? stop pissing?

Once more, my friends, join me in a chorus of Fuck Kathleen Stock. Sussex Uni has won on appeal a judgment that they were stifling her ability to be a bigot.

great news indeed!

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-USCT-Strategy-1.pdf

Our nation has not been well served by its Intelligence Community (IC), which has been mired in old ways of looking at threats, or has been actively weaponized by its leadership as a political tool. Whether plotting against conservative Catholics attending traditional mass in Virginia, parents standing up for their children at schoolboard meetings, Members of Congress, or President Trump and his associates, this Administration will continue to prohibit the IC from being used politically against innocent Americans. As real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.
In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent. We will do the same with the state sponsors of such groups and those governments undertaking lethal plots on U.S. soil or against Americans anywhere.

of course i'm _angry_

i mean am i upset that president Certified Loverboy is classifying _me_ as a threat to America? well, yeah. i also don't have the privilege to _do_ anything about it. hell, i gotta be careful about what i _say_, particularly here on the internet. and i'm choosing, perhaps unwisely, to speak up anyway, because a culture of silence benefits none of us. i'm not advocating for anything. i refuse to advocate for anything. i limit myself to observing, because i think it is important to say, as clearly as possible, what is happening here.

if the president and his administration have decided that Charlie Kirk is their choice for Ernst vom Rath, well, so be it. the thing people forget about Schicksalstag is that it _changed_ how people thought about that government. their leader was derided as, i don't know, an "Austrian paperhanger" or a "short-fingered vulgarian" or something. after Schicksalstag people started to realize "oh. oh wait, this is a Problem." wikipedia:

The Times of London observed on 11 November 1938: "No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenceless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday."[12]

and, i mean, history doesn't repeat, it iterates. an event like that of the night of November 9th is... sure, the authorities would stand by, but would _ordinary people_? based on what i'm seeing, i genuinely don't believe so. three years ago i was on here throwing around words like "genocide", which i've stopped doing because i don't think it's effective, nor do i think it's _necessary_. rafael lemkin, who coined the term, considered it an act of _norms entrepeneurship_. which is to say, here was something that people did not _want_ to accept, that was too enormously evil for people to even understand. at some point things are past denial for the majority of us, though of course there are always those who will deny every genocide to ever exist.

the acts of the current american administration are, i observe, past the point of denial for an increasing number of allies. i know how i came across three years ago. as a doomer, as someone paranoid and perhaps even hysterical. i don't blame anyone for not believing me then. i'm just tremendously relieved that people are starting to recognize the enormity of the horror being perpetrated by the american government.

i do, i think, believe in america, and it's because of the people who stand with us, those who are proud americans. the america they believe in is being systemically structurally dismantled by the current administration. the biggest problem, i think, with this is not their potential to destroy. it's the destruction that happens through _neglect_. though america has always systemically oppressed and disenfranchised groups of people, primarily Black Americans, america exists do to things _other_ than oppress and exterminate people. its capability to do this is increasingly radically constrained by its ruler. i look forward to an america that can govern for the people, by the people, and of the people, an america that can promote the general welfare. there are no shortage of americans willing to do that work, craving that work, should we be permitted.

I didn’t know that you were state-sponsored and a part of International Antifa, Inc. congrats, Kate!

I didn’t know that you were state-sponsored and a part of International Antifa, Inc. congrats, Kate!

― Brenton Wood Conference (Boring, Maryland), Friday, May 8, 2026 1:52 PM (one hour ago)

pffft don't front like you're not following the Antifa Meeting Thread :)

anyway fwiw since y'all here support trans rights, you're _also_ Antifa.

and once more i am reminded of that Twilight Zone episode about Castro. or, you know... many, many examples of imperialist foreign policy. "we don't understand, we're killing way more of them than they are of us... no matter how many (slurs) we kill, there just seem to be more. What? What do you mean those weren't (slurs)? They were our allies? And now they hate us? Well, god-damn, that's what we get for trying to defend those (slurs)."