Notices by Evan Urquhart 🏳️‍⚧️ (e_urq@journa.host), page 5

Generally speaking, I think the conversation about gender affirming care for youth should focus on allowing parents to make the final decision, and on pushing back against bad journalism that leads parents in the wrong direction on the science.

Politically, the GOP has made a big bet on parents rights. So it makes it easier to argue against state bans to use that pre-existing propensity to support parents' deciding for their kids.

But that's not ultimately why I think it's the right approach.

Parents are a... fraught topic for LGBTQ+ people, and all the more so for trans folks. Many in our community have been outright rejected by their families, and those who don't often have difficult reltionships.

So, it's not without real reluctance and strain that I come down on the side of letting parents decide, at least in the absense of abuse.

I've foster parented queer youth. It was a wonderful experience. But what it taught me more than anything is that the system sucks and most kids do better w their families, even when the families are pretty bad.

Kids are dependent on their parents. Practically speaking, even if they're legally able to access care w/o permission, very few will be able to do so safely. It feels like a red herring to put a lot of effort into arguing for something unlikely to work for kids in their real lives.

Studies consistently show that having affirming parents is one of the most powerful protective factors for trans youth. Way too few trans kids have that. THAT is what needs to change to really make a different in kids' lives.

Changing parents hearts and minds may be hard, but it's the only way I can think of to really help the majority of trans youth.

I'm probably very late to noticing this, but I had to look up some stuff about Nazi Germany yesterday and used Wkipedia as a starting place, as one does, and I am 90% sure the pages showed signs of being edited by people who are pro-Nazi/pro-Hitler. I even made an edit to remove a very blatant example, but it seemed to be an issue on all the wikipedia articles I happened to visit on Nazi stuff.

Anyone else noticed this? Has anyone written about it?

I fielded a report early this morning from a white Masto native against a person of color on this server. The white Mastodonian accused our user of being a "fascist" and supporting fascism.

Looking more closely at the interactions, and the accounts, it became clear to me that OUR USER was being harassed, for no apparent reason other than that they were a member of journa.host.

My pose towards Mastodonians who were here before journa.host started has mostly been one of listening and seeking compromise and common ground.

I'm not giving up on that- I always want to be learning, testing my assumptions, and working harder to do right by people in communities I serve.

However. I'm not a baby user here any more. I am making my own decisions, my own judgements.

One of those judgements is this: It's unacceptable for Masto long timers to target ordinary members for harassment based on their having an account here.

I will limit or suspend accounts who target our journalists this way. I don't appreciate being called a fascist or a corporate shill or whatever myself, but at least I'm actually on the volunteer mod team!

It's unacceptable to subject folks to harassment that way. It's not standing up against fascism, it's bullying. You've been warned.