Notices by Cait the Proud Trans Woman (oldladyplays@wargamers.social)

CW: potentially nauseating relationship gushing

This is what my lovely boy Michael said to me today. It was in response to something sweet I'd said:

You complete me in ways that don't limit me but expand my sense of self. Only adding never subtracting. You expand my bubble with glitter and rainbows filled with colours I've only ever seen in art.

-=-

Which is why I call myself the luckiest girl in the world. Cause this is the boy who loves me. :)

2.5 years together next month. My first and only match on my only use of a dating app ever.

Ya just never know when the bug's gonna get ya.

#T4T #TransJoy

CW: mention of genitals, reference to SH and SA of children, all oblique and non-graphic

Re: the SCOTUS decision to bar trans girls from sports they belong in, "to protect women".

#USPol #SCOTUS #Trump

Ahhh...yes. Protecting women. By subjecting 10-year-old girls to genital exams for the crime of (checks notes) *wanting to play softball with their friends*, so that no trans girl could possibly access the same harmless game, all 10 of them across the entire United States of America who have said they wanted to. And whose teammates want them to be there.

The obvious answer to this "issue" is that if we let trans girls have the right puberty the first time, they will never have been affected by testosterone more than a brief flick across the gonads, and won't have any advantage but their inherent sporting ability. Endae proablem, ken?

But that simple, humane answer would fall afoul of the dogma of "protecting women" or "protecting children" - some of whom will do SH because of this cruelty. By "protecting women", of course they mean white women.

Because we all know that women and girls who are NOT white will be treated much worse by any trans-detection system than any white girl will. It's not coincidence that all the athletes about whom this panic has raised complaints so far are women of the global majority. Not white women.

So this will hurt cis women, and subject girls to another institutional opportunity for routine SA, which will inevitably be exploited, as they always are, by sick fucks. None of whom will be trans women. And as always, whiteness will protect some, but not all white girls. Nothing will protect the others.

"Protecting" women.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I think my favourite response from last night was a woman who works facilitating a group for families of trans kids. She said, to my teary face (as it is again now):

"You walked, so I could run. I ran, so those kids can fly."

The thing I have wanted most is to be where trans kids don't have the experience we had. And some don't now.

Not enough. But we are closer. And so I get to see trans kids become healthy, well-adjusted adults.

In my own lifetime! I never believed we'd get that. Not when I'd be able to see it.

I stand humbly on the shoulders of actual giants. Marsha P Johnson. Sylvia Rivera. Leslie Feinberg. Julia Serrano. Laverne Cox. So many, many others.

That's pretty fucking incredible company to approach the feet of.

Just amazing.

I am tough. I have to be. I live in chronic pain, which has been getting steadily worse since the car accident which caused it in 1988.

I take meds designated for stage 4 cancer patients, every day, for the last 12 years, the highest potency of opioids I will voluntarily take (one below fentanyl: hydromorphone, 5 times as powerful as morphine).

So when I say headaches are the worst thing I have to deal with, I want that to be in full perspective.

I get them rarely. A migraine every few years, which sends me without fail to the ER/A&E department, for an IV of toradol, the only thing that knocks it down.

But the worst? Is when I just have a headache, for no evident reason. I have had one such since last night, about 14 hours at this point. Not a migraine - those happen in a very specific spot, behind my right eyebrow at the inner end. Really specific.

This is just a headache, high on the right front octant of my head.

But because headaches make my thinker not work very well, they make me miserable, cranky, and unpleasant to be around. I am a thinker. I spend a lot of time assimilating and analysing data, which allows me to provide the predictions that have proven to be my most boosted posts. With a headache, those don't happen.

So today, I have a headache. Don't poke the panther, I recommend. She may not be her usual kind and empathetic self in response. In fact, she may eat your face.

Why should leopards get all the fun?

Fucking headaches. Worst possible pain. Give me crippling back pain ANY DAY, compared to a simple headache. I would give my right arm for a permanent Protection from Headache spell. I can learn to write left-handed.

Without a functioning thinker, I don't have anything to write *about*.

This is, yes, entirely a pity party, and I'm just whining because my head hurts and I don't like it.

Waah.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/fascismnew-federal-rule-would-require

No spoiler hiding for this one, my loves. I need EVERYONE to see this. Boost this fucker to the MOON. Screenshot it, include my name, and spread it EVERYWHERE.

Sorry for the grim news. But I think this is important, and I want each of you in your respective countries to think about whether you'd be willing to contact your representative to tell them to pressure Canada to open the doors to trans refugees.

That's it. No changes in your countries are needed - just people willing to stand up and say "Never Again". This is the bad one. This is the Nuremberg Race Laws being enacted. This will basically strip all ability from any federally-funded entity - ANY - that allows that trans people exist.

This one, my friends, I'm sorry, but it's the choice to genocide the trans population of the US. A nice quiet one. Where we all just fade into obscurity, and are never seen again. They want to cause us so much despair that we will take care of the final solution part for them.

Please. If you give a damn about humanity, and people's rights to live as who they are...basic human dignity. Health care. Not being force-detransitioned in prisons that we've been put into because we were designated terrorists by the Nazi regime of Trump.

Just contact your rep, whoever that is, wherever that is, and start that conversation for me, okay? Just ask them to start asking questions. Of Canada. We have a chance to save literally hundreds of thousands of innocent US trans folk.

I can handle the work on this end, in Canada. I have people I can mobilise, work with. But international pressure would be an ENORMOUS help.

If you want to translate my post into your language, please do. If you DM me the text, I will re-post it myself, and take the arrows for spreading the call.

I - we - need your help.

#trans #antifascist #USTransGenocide

Just had a thought.

White supremacy.

If white people are so superior...why do they need to dilute the Black vote so much? Isn't that odd?

"We are the rulers, by nature. That is why we have rigged the election so that only we can win."

I am having a painful day.

Would you kind folks, in the next 24 hours or so, tag me on a post you make about the last moment (or much longer?) you had or saw some #TransJoy ? Or #NBJoy ? Or #AgenderJoy ? Now you see why I'm asking? Too many possible sources. #BlackJoy or #DisabledJoy or #DeafJoy or so many others.

If you've a marginalised identity and found joy recently, tell me what it was. Don't be afraid to say it was about discomfiting your oppressor. Speak your joy. Doesn't matter if I share an identity with your oppressor, I don't do defensive. If I've done what you say, I'll apologise and/or accept responsibility for my failures and misdeeds and privilege. If I haven't, then I will share your victory joy, bc any oppressor is too many.

I just want to hear what's bringing you joy in an identity important to you?

Thread RULE: if it isn't about you, don't make it about you. You need to defend yourself for some reason? This is neither time nor place. Joy only. You wanna hurt someone? Not here. This is a braver space than that.

What's your joy, if you want to share?

Really there should be a gender reveal party, but like, a real one, when someone comes out as trans. Where someone's actual gender is revealed, not their possession of a particular canonical set of standard-issue genitalia. Cause that's what people are really asking when they look at your stroller and say "Oh, how cute, boy or girl?"

What they mean is, "Does your infant have a vulva or a penis? This is clearly information I am entitled to, and it is in no way utterly creepy that I'm asking."

If my kids had been that small when I was momming them, I would have answered "I dunno yet, but if you'll scan the QR code on the stroller side, I'll add you to the email list to inform you when they tell me, okay?"

Only the QR code goes to a website at the domain "nunyafugginbizness.org". Which has, in large friendly letters, "Nunya Fuggin Bizness."

And then a list of therapists local to you who specialise in helping people with weird sex hangups. Like asking someone about their infant's genitals.

@epilonious

That's perfect. I love it. I had one friend who really didn't tell anyone the sex of their child until the child was old enough to assert gender. The name they were given was deliberately gender-ambivalent in this time, and the child finally spoke about it at 5. Asked if they wanted a different name, they declined, saying they liked their name. And I'm deliberately not saying what their gender is, because it doesn't matter.

My friends explicitly did this on the off chance their child was trans, so that there would be no history for the kid to live down if they decided to transition or change their name.

I love that so much. THAT is allyship.

Does anyone have knowledge of an instance that is focused on Minnesota?

I have a friend who's mounting an outsider Senate run in MN, and I'd like to find her an instance that has a strong MN presence to help move her campaign.

She's a member of DSA, trans woman, with a history in public service.

DMs are fine as responses, as well as open answers.

#trans #MutualAid

An update on the Black trans woman from the US who is making an asylum claim here in Canada. Zara has had her claim finished, submitted, and accepted, and has a hearing today in Vancouver about determining her eligibility. My understanding is that this step is for weeding out the no-hope applications, so we're feeling fairly confident we'll get past it. Zara's application is based on strong evidence.

If any of you have any money to spare, we're making one more drive to keep her fed and housed - it should, by ordinary timelines, be about a month or so before she receives a SIN and a work permit.

She will find work quickly, and be reasonably well-paid as a massage therapist.

So it's about one more month we're hoping to raise, and our aim point is another CAD1000 from where we're at today:

https://gogetfunding.com/help-zara-reach-safety/

Anything you can manage is a help, and if you can't, you owe no apology. We all have our own situations and needs, and no disrespect should come to someone who can't find it to spare right now.

If you need a different way to contribute, such as Wise or the like from the UK, please DM me on Signal at oldladyplays.11

I can share my banking info there to facilitate your donation.

I am not being paid for this work. I am working as a community activist, for my community, in providing what aid my white privilege can access for her. It is my belief that given her vulnerable status between states, it would be unethical to expect her to make reasonable choices about what my work is worth to her.

The goal here is refugee status eligibility for all trans/nb people in the US, here in Canada.

I'm also working a second path, trying to get Temporary Protective Status made into a thing in Canada, which might soothe conservative freakouts about a sudden large influx of trans folk.

I can explain how I'd see that working, and give you some talking points to build off in a submission to your own MP.

Thanks for reading to the end.

Have a gold star.⭐

One of the things I often say when I help someone is, "pay it forward when you can."

And I want to just open that tin up a little, and have a peek inside, because I think it's more sneaky good than people think it is.

So, for those who haven't encountered it before, the idea is that if I help you, but there's nothing I need from you in return, then you feel a debt. Pay it forward says "Your debt is to our shared community." And it means you can pay off that debt whenever you have the means, *even if the original favour came from someone no longer around.*

In this way, this behaviour sneaks in community building in a long-term way. Because while I'm only one elder among a few here, doing my best to be a help to as many as need me, the odds that any of these people I'm helping will be in a position to help with something I need is rather slim. For one thing, the odds are good that my remaining best-before time is about 30 years. In the scheme of things, when many of my friends are in their 20s and 30s, this means I may well be gone when they are in a place to help the way I have. And I won't need the help anyway.

But if they all remember to pay it forward...then they in turn create a generation that owes them a debt of gratitude. Which makes them want to give back.

And slowly, a community grows, that supports one another the way they were supported earlier.

So when I say that, I'm not just tossing a slogan at you without thought. I'm telling you my piece of how we make a community for our people. Take that piece, and use it when you build something for our community. And so on.

Y'all are my people. Just as I am your people. And if we work together, we can only get stronger as a group, a bouquet of identities, and as a community.

I know the Dunning-Krueger Hypothesis has been discredited in some manner, but I did want to introduce a very serious piece of evidence that backs them up.

Donald Trump, doubling down on tariffs if SCOTUS blocks them.

That is all.

#uspol

We've all heard the tale of how to own a Nazi bar, i'm fairly sure.

I was drumming up interest in a local board game group i really enjoy, on my local queer Discord server. I got some interest.

Someone on the board games group's server asked "why did you make a point about us being queer friendly?" Not rudely, just curious.

"Because a lot of community groups are invisibly closed to us. We daren't reveal ourselves because of antipathy to queer folk. This place doesn't do that, at all. So i tell people it's safe, and they feel more comfy coming along."

Someone said, "Oh, so it's like the Nazi bar story, only good." I thought for a moment, and they're right. Sort of. Because unlike Nazis, queer folk aren't an invasive species. We don't push people out. Assholes just self-select choosing not to be associated with a bar that's queer-friendly.

Which is fine, system working as designed.

So...how do we tell the tale of the Queer-friendly bar, and the positive feedback loop that can occur when a business is explicitly friendly to queer folk?

Cause I think that could be a simple, true, and effective point about the great difference between choosing to be nice to Nazis instead of queer folk. Or vice versa, being nice to queers and bum-rushing the Nazis.

The Nazi Bar story is one we all know. Anyone got a proposal for how to do a good tale of how the bar got so lively? "Oh, I bought a drink for this gay fella once, and soon there were loads. But they're great guys, and if ya tell them no, they stop bugging ya, which is giving me weird feelings about how I treat women. And we get a lot fewer assholes, too."

Someone? Got a seed for the good story lurking here? I wanna make us some rippin' good properganda.

A thought about #uspol: one Afghan man shoots but not kills two Nat Guard members*. I hope all three recover.

* I'm told one of the two has died, which is a tragic waste of a young life. This is an edit.

What's interesting is the response: "re-vet all the Afghani-Americans in the country!"

Because one was killed, and another badly wounded.

300 mass shootings a year, killing thousands.

Response:

I wonder sometimes what the problem is that the US is currently suffering from. And i think i have it. The core element that underlies Trumpism. It's Teh Stoopid, stupid.

Okay, technically not true. It's really ignorance. But at some point, well-educated people started to vote against giving their *kids* a good education.

And it's really biting them in the ass now.

The illiteracy, that gets talked about a bunch.

But i think it's the innumeracy that is more crucial atm. E.g., the $2000 cheque that Trump promised from the tariff revenues.

Let's steel-man this. Say he only meant people over 21. That's 70% of the pop; 238 Million people.

$2000 each is 2×10^3 × 2.4 x 10^8.

That is, then, conservatively, a 476 Billion commitment.

According to the Yale budget lab, latest figures on tariffs are 111B this year. Note that includes before Trump became Pres, and months before his tariffs went into effect. So it's a maximal estimate by a trustable source.

So all that needs to happen then is to wait 4 years or so, when the tariffs will have risen to over 450B, to cover the cheques he wants to send.

That's the *best-case* scenario for him.

It's an evidently absurd promise that won't happen. Like the 17T - sorry, i meant 21T, but - no, wait, it's now 25 unbelievable trillions of dollars to be invested in manufacturing things Stateside.

So the entire world, except the US, accounted for 75T in GDP last year. So he wants us to believe that because he's squeezed 111B out of US consumers' pockets, the rest of the world are going to spend a third of an entire year's GDP to capture a market making up about 3% of the world's population?

And people believe this rank pangolin turd.

It's a deadly combination of exceptionalist propaganda, poor education, anti-intellectualism, and thus widespread ignorance of basic critical thinking tools.

Trump says he's making the world respect the US. What we see is a country so ignorant they thought this guy knew business.

#uspol

@hellomiakoda

Yeah, lesbian was definitely my jam when i transitioned, and for maybe 12 years? But when i had bottom surgery - causing both my terrible dysphoria to go, and opening the door for the first time for someone other than a rare doctor or two to touch me in that area. And i was very surprised to discover that without one, for me, i wasn't nearly as bothered about penes or others' gender or bodily configs as i had been.

I stress this is MY experience, and i don't claim it applies to anyone else. It may, or it may not. I'm not trying to convert anyone to pan.

Just saying that it was my experience that transition revealed to me things about myself that i didn't know before had existed.

Like that i genuinely get pleasure and pride from being helpful and kind. I like being that person. That I can find or deliver pleasure to just about any human being, if they consent. I'm kinda good at it, even.

That distilling my life into lessons can be a skill i can claim to be legitimately good at.

That i am a True Believer in "Teamwork Makes the Dream Work!" That a well-practiced team can exceed the sum of their parts.

That i run on hope. Without it i would wither and fade. With it, i can shift heavy things. Like cities and school boards.

That for some reason, most of the best human beings i've ever known had darker skin than I, and most of those had African features.

That logic and critical thinking are our best features, and too many of us squander those gifts unappreciated.

That I can be both openly pansexual, and culturally lesbian. They are my people at my core. Where i first came out, where i lived for 12 years, where i was first accepted as a woman. Where i can always turn for old friends.

That my trans boyfriend does not invalidate that, and *not* because of his AGAB. Because his masculinity is bold and protective and loving and queer and vulnerable and his.

Whoo. Guess i had summat to say. 😁

@hellomiakoda

Interesting. I'm pan myself. I reason that i know how to give pleasure with the various configs I've encountered, and my config.ini file has plenty of room remaining for encounters with new setups.

And since looks don't hugely matter to me, that leaves me with a potential dating pool of..."Siri, how many people as of midnight my time tonight will be queer in some manner that includes me, between 42 and 62, and not highly aggressive?"

Whatever she says, that's how many.

Maybe a decibillion?

Gosh, a socialist mayor would be *just awful*!

We've got a lovely wealthy woman, who's kind enough to donate her time in return for a piddling couple of hundred thousand a year. I know, right? It seems hardly worth getting out of bed for. But she strives. Anyway, she's been super for the local housing market, very carefully keeping the council from doing anything too populist, like re-zoning things to encourage infill densification and thus *increase the supply of housing* in a town which has nearly tripled in size in the 33 years I've lived here, and is now planned to reach 1,000,000 people in about five years. But she holds the line! So Line Go Up on housing, which makes everyone very happy, as long as they're one of the relatively few who own a house. Not so much if you rent it, of course.

And we continue to have not one but *two* entire 18-hole golf courses *within city limits*. Which seems a terrific use of green space in a city with a hard border as a town limit, by popular demand, don't you think? Enough golf facilities for probably, what...maybe as many as 100 players at a time, across two facilities! And is in no way related to the fast-growing number of homeless people now sleeping in the encampment near the train station.

But yeah...a socialist mayor. Gosh, what a nightmare, huh? Economy focused on the common good, instead of Line Go Up Faster Every Year? Improving the supply of social housing...maybe by distributing Tiny Houses on some parkland that's not being much used right now except for some people spoiling a good walk, as the saying goes. Making buses free, since we pay for everything the for-profit company uses to make its profit off our property. Non-profit supermarkets, with good healthy food at a reasonable price. On the transit lines.

What a nightmare.

Sigh.

I should be so lucky.

So, an idea I just had. I was introducing two people i knew to one another.

I told each of them three pieces of information (in an email; orally this would change a bit, see below). The name, pronunciation, and their pronouns.

So...let's say it's two of my friends who are activists. One is Oloseun (she/her), the other Mya (they/them).

"Hi, folks. Oloseun (o-LOtion she/her), meet Mya (MAya, they/them)."

Orally? I'd say the name a second time, to give the pronunciation clearly, and finish with pronouns.

As we move into a world where more and more people from not-solely-anglo-places come into what had been much more white-focused places, it is more important to learn one another's names well. It's basic respect. And it's something anglophones are particularly bad at.

Aim your pronunciation guide at your friend's level and background of linguistic knowledge. If they know IPA, use it. If not, use one that tries to make unique sound markers for a given sound. It doesn't need perfection. Get someone in range, and the other will feel more comfortable correcting them.

Use psych knowledge to help yourself. 🙂