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

I love Fediverse. Thanks everyone!

:D

Rats - someone posted about a book yesterday, about lost stories of trans life between 1850 and 1950. I really wanted to get it, and completely forgot to note the name of the book, or the author.

Does anyone remember what I'm talking about? I would have seen it on my feed about 13:30 GMT yesterday (going off the email I wrote excitedly about it to a friend).

I've tried scrolling back, but that's over a thousand posts back on my timeline, and I don't have the patience for that.

EDIT: Timeline beats search engine, every time. Thank you, my friends.

The book is Before Gender, by Eli Erlick.

I'm going to stake out what will sound like a radical position, and make my argument for why it isn't at all radical, but common-sense response to a simple problem.

When someone decides to transition, the way it should go is, "I am doing this with my body, and if you don't like it, mind your business."

That's it. Then start hormones, if you want them. Change your name and your gender marker, if you want. Get surgeries if you want. Or not, to all of that.

Because gatekeeping is fundamentally immoral. On what basis does *anyone* claim the right to tell me what I can do or not do with MY body in MY one life?

Why? Because gender-affirming care is already fully legal in the US, everywhere.

For cis people.

You're a cis woman and want breast augmentation? Get in there and get cut, baby.

Erectile dysfunction? We have a range of drugs to help.

Vaginal dryness? Here's progesterone.

Low T? We got you, bud.

Losing your hair? Here's your finasteride.

We don't blink an eye at these obvious instances of gender-affirming care, because they're for cis people.

But try to get affirmed in a gender you weren't coerced into? Whoa! You'll need to see some GATEKEEPERS about that, you're not old enough to make that decision for yourself!

(note that reproductive care, on the other hand, is NOT available everywhere in the US)

It is nothing but transphobia, and if you back that system, you're doing a transphobic thing.

That means if a trans girl needs you to lie and say they always played with girly things because they're facing a gatekeeper, you lie your face off for them.

If a trans guy needs top surgery to feel right, but has to prove his gender, you can tell whatever comforting lies the gatekeeper needs to hear to soothe their wobbly guts.

It is not immoral to refuse to participate in an immoral system. It is, in fact, a moral imperative to fight against it.

Wanna be an ally? This is one way to help.

Just for the record...

...have paid taxes
...have had jobs my whole life
...used to play football, baseball, and hockey
...wrote standup comic poetry
...have had several long-term relationships
...went to the bathroom unassisted this very morning, just like every time

First, autism is a spectrum. To make claims about all autistic people because you've met one is a pretty big logic error.

Second, autism isn't a disease, so it can't be an epidemic. Better surveillance of young humans has improved our detection abilities, and we catch it more readily than we used to.

Third, we should be accommodating the needs of autistic children, not trying to eliminate them.

The so-called search for the causes of autism is in fact an eliminationist goal: they want to find a way to wipe autistic people out. RFK Jr is like a Nazi "scientist" trying to find out what causes Jewishness: bigoted, wrong from the start, and evil.

#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD

@nano_ @Exandra

So the sole reason you replied to this thread is to piss on the idea?

Well, thanks for your contribution. Very enlightening and useful.

A thought for trans allies in this time:

You often ask us what you can do to help. Well, here's something you can do. Wear trans badges, buttons, pins, scarves, whatever you've got. Explicitly. I wanna see that blue and pink EVERYWHERE.

Because the more of you cis folk do that, the safer we will be in crowds and such. It will mean that wearing a badge of support for trans people doesn't necessarily out that person as trans.

"But wait," you're thinking maybe, "if I do that, people might think *I* am trans!"

Well, why is that a problem for you? Would you be offended by someone thinking you might be trans? Would you be scared? Welcome to our world.

This is your time, cis people. You were all ready to call yourselves allies when it didn't matter more than changing your PFP background. Now the rubber meets the road. We need you. We need your help to normalise our existence to other cis people. It could save lives.

If someone accuses you of being trans (imagine being *accused* of existing while trans?), don't deny it. Ask why it matters to them. Keep calm.

#LGBTQ #trans #allies

Bonjour mes amis. J'ai une autre demande d'aide. J'ai une amie trans qui vient de fuir les États-Unis, mais elle n'a pas pu emporter ses affaires et n'a nulle part où vivre.

Elle vit dans la région de Québec, donc toute ressource que nous pourrions trouver pour l'aider serait précieuse. Pour l'instant, elle loge temporairement chez quelqu'un, mais ça ne peut pas durer. Elle attend une place dans un refuge, mais ça ne durera que trois mois, et peut-être même plusieurs mois encore.

Je recherche donc quelqu'un qui connaît quelqu'un dans la région qui pourrait l'aider et qui aurait une chambre libre le temps qu'elle se remette sur pied. Je peux me porter garant d'elle : elle est digne de confiance, serviable et facile à vivre. Je la connais depuis deux ans. Elle doit rester dans la région si elle veut aller au Canada, car ses enfants y vivent (avec son ex).

Aucune demande d'argent n'est formulée pour ce projet, je cherche simplement de l'aide pour trouver un logement le temps de trouver du travail et de se réinstaller.

Merci. Les soutiens sont les bienvenus

#Quebec

Merci à Martin Hamel @martin pour la traduction.

Hello, my friends. I have a different request for aid. I have a trans friend who has just escaped the US, but she couldn't bring any of her stuff along, and she doesn't have anywhere to live.

She's in the region of Quebec City, so any resources we can find to help her would be valuable. Right now she's crashing temporarily with someone, but that can't last. She's waiting on a place in a shelter, but that will only last 3 months when it happens, and may be months yet.

So I'm looking for anyone who knows someone in the region who might be able to help, who has a room to spare while she gets on her feet. I can vouch for her, she's trustworthy and helpful, easy to get along with. I've known her two years. She needs to stay in the region if she's going to be in Canada, because her children live there (with her ex).

There's no money request on this one, just looking for help finding a place she can stay while she finds work and gets settled again.

Thank you. Boosts encouraged.

#Quebec

I want to write a novel about artificial intelligence, starring a robot called Kai.

That's a joke for our German friends.

For those who remember, about two years ago I put up a petition to the Government of Canada, which received 167k signatures, the third-highest total in Canadian parliamentary history. That petition requested that the government recognise the risk to trans people of the hate legislation being passed around the US and UK, and be willing to accept asylum requests from those countries.

They responded with indifference, saying that the US and UK were "safe third countries", and thus ineligible for refugee claims.

In the last couple of weeks, trans activist Fae Johnstone's Momentum Canada have started a new petition, not a governmental one this time (https://www.momentumcanada.net/pathways), requesting the same accommodation.

I wanted to say that we have once again a champion for that request, in the form of the great ally to our community, Mike Morrice of the Green Party. He spoke movingly in Parliament last time about the need for this move to be made, and I worked with him to try and lobby on Parliament Hill, without success.

For Canadians, I want to recommend you consider sending this petition link to your Member of Parliament. If they're supportive, they'll pass it on, and if they're not, they'll at least know we're coming in big numbers, and most importantly that YES, they do have trans-friendly constituents.

I'll be meeting with Mike next week to discuss next steps, but I wanted to give heads-up to those in the US feeling the fear: we're still fighting for your refuge here. Hold on to your hope. We'll exhaust every possibility.

This tool: https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/search

...will help you find your MP's contact information. Please be polite but firm in expressing your fears for our community members to the south, even if they're Tories. The more of us do this, if we can get it happening in every riding in the country, it could be very powerful.

#CanPol #TransAsylumNow

Question: Anyone out there with prosopagnosia got recommendations on how to learn to, y'know...identify people by their faces?

I'm only coming to realise now that my life has been one long exercise in compensating for prosopagnosia (face blindness). People show me pictures of before and after facial surgeries, and I can't see the changes. You'd think that'd be easy, but my eyes just slide off people's features or something. I don't know how it works, I just know I'm coping with it, poorly, and I want better strategies.

Mostly I use other things, like what glasses they're wearing, or how they typically style their hair, their build, their clothing choices, all kinds of things, to compensate for my inability to tell similar faces apart. But all of those things are changeable, and indeed often changed.

So anyone else out there like this? And how do you deal with it?

When I was in university, I did my fourth-year undergrad thesis on Russian literature. Specifically, the Image of the Machine in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Russian Utopias and Dystopias.

A real page-turner, I assure you. And no, before you ask, I don't have a copy. And I'm not giving out my doxx so y'all can search my university for it under my deadname. If it were online, which I'm quite sure it is not.

Anyway, the point I came to was this: in the pre-revolutionary work, the image of the machine was as humanity's humble servant, freeing us to become as gods with our leisure time. In post-revolutionary work, the machine had evolved into the master, enslaving people to its needs for maintenance and supply.

And I got into some stuff about the psychology of Russians before and after the revolution as measured at the time (and those books were fun to locate!). That's not really relevant to today's discussion, so I'll leave it aside.

This obviously relates to my feelings about the current state of AI. We are living in what can reasonably be described as a dystopic present. And fittingly, the machine is become our master. We work free for its supply, and willingly sacrifice the planet and our own ability to survive to maintain it.

Is this a manifesto? In some ways, maybe. But it's really time that we thought about what we're doing, and what we want to do about it. Because the only way this stops is by us doing something about it. And the only power we have is our willingness to use the tools that corporations dangle in front of us to distract us while they rifle our pockets for loose data.

Or our unwillingness.

So be unwilling. Be noncompliant. We don't have to break laws to grind the machine down. We just have to refuse to feed it.

#StopUsingAI #RefuseToChooseAI

Alright, it's time someone said it directly. This AI bullshit is getting out of hand. We need to start working together and saying NO.

Any time someone tries to implement AI into your daily life, refuse. Do not comply. If we all did this, companies would realise it's costing them too much to play around with this terrible technology, and it'll get put away some until it's worth having. That may be someday, but LLMs are not that day.

I went to my doctor's recently, and she handed me a sheet telling me that they were using AI to record interviews, so they could use it to transcribe the interview. I asked if I could opt out, because it didn't say I could on the sheet.

Turns out I can, opt out I mean, and I did. She made some noise about wanting to spend more time with her family, but okay, with a big sigh. And I'm thinking, "you're a *doctor*. If you want more time off, take more time off."

And I've been doing this ever since. I turn off every AI that they shove into the software I use.

Why do I do this? Because their AIs are being used to scrape data for their companies. For free. All they have to do is come up with something that will save people a few dollars, and those people will jump in and use it "for free", not knowing the price is being paid by the patients, rather than them.

Because here's the thing: if they want my data, they can fucking PAY me for it. Why the hell should they get to just steal my data from me via my doctor, and make money off it without cutting me in? It's obscene, we wouldn't put up with it anywhere else, and we shouldn't here.

As long as generative AIs are based on theft as a business model, we need to eschew them completely.

ETA: Some excellent points being made in the comments about other reasons why these current AI are not what we want. I'm not opposed to the development of AI - I'm opposed to its too-early deployment.

@ascentale

Just tangentially...speaking as someone with serious PTSD, I'd be so appreciative if bike users would just make a little noise when they're about to pass me from behind. It's so startling when a bike comes flying past me in total silence (with e-bikes, this is happening more often and at faster pace). It means I don't like using multi-purpose trails, because I"m exhausted at the end from the hypervigilance state I'm pushed into.

It's just a kindness, is all, to give a ring or a friendly "passing you on the left" or whatever, when you're coming up behind someone. Most of the time, you'll be ignored. BUt some of the time, you'll be making someone's day a lot easier.

I understand and appreciate Sarah McBride. I think she's been smart, strategic, and done what she needs to. Look for examples before her of early Black members of Congress, who had to endure all kinds of indignities, but stuck to it, stuck it out, and refused to rise to the bait. History always remembers the dignity and restraint of those people who've done this work.

And be sure, it's only serious restraint that's probably keeping her from popping off like a whole fireworks show. It's the same restraint you see to this day in marginalised members of the House, who face numerous indignities with grace.

The Republicans are pigs. You wrestle with them on their turf, you both get covered in shit and mud, and the pigs enjoy it. They want to humiliate her and make her feel less than. She's refusing to be either of those things.

It would be immensely satisfying, I admit, to see her cut loose and destroy Nancy Mace and MTG with some epic clapback. But it wouldn't accomplish her goal. Like it or not, she's going to be the face of a generation of trans folks to the public.

She has an awareness of her responsibility, to *not* be the "angry and dangerous man" they want to portray her as, and she's keeping that responsibility tightly to her, so she can start doing some good for us.

Let's not attack our own for having a different approach to bringing about change. We need radicals *and* pragmatists to accomplish change. Dreamers and builders. Wreckers and disruptors. We need them all.

I found my passport this morning. I had thought I'd lost it, as I checked what I thought were all the pockets of my backpack and didn't find it before I left the hotel coming home.

Today, I did the laundry, and as part of that, grabbed a few things that had been in the backpack as laundry. And there, underneath them...my passport. Huzzah for unremembered pockets.

Now I can much more easily get it renewed before Dec 1, when it expires.

ETA: I just remembered when I got my first passport with an F on it. It was before my surgery, so I could travel *for* the surgery. Good for one year, then you had to prove you'd *earned* your new gender marker, or it would revert.

Anyway, transphobia aside, I remember looking at it, and the first thing I saw was nationality: "CANADIAN/CANADIENNE" (all our official documents from the federal government are in French and English). And I started crying right there - this was the first piece of ID I had been able to switch over, 12 years after transition. And there it was: CANADIENNE. For those who don't speak French, that's the feminine form of Canadian in French.

Only then did I notice the F, and cried some more, but the first thing I noticed was the nationality.

@Natasha_Jay

Well, the farthest right AfD came second in Saxony, but only barely, to CDU? And thus AfD probably won't be forming the government, but a coalition around the CDU (right wing but not *as* right wing as AfD). So far the cordon sanitaire (or firewall, or Brandmauer) around the extreme right has held...barely. No one will go into coalition with them, so they can't get the votes to form government.

So far, anyway. It's worrisome, though, because Brandenburg (also in the east) votes later this month, and AfD leads there too.

It's all pretty scary, for sure. That so many voted for strongly right-wing policies and politicians is a bit terrifying.

EDITED: My mother, two weeks after misgendering me for the first time in decades, sent me this birthday card. It's very kind and made me cry.

Dare to be your truest self
Answer your heart's desires
Unlock the dreams within you
Grace the world with your talents
Have faith in your own strength
Take risks for what you love
Embrace your unique place in the world
Recognize how amazing you are.

It's an interesting thing, getting old. I'm here a couple of years from 60, and realising that I've probably got just 20 years left before the solipsistic universe ends.

That's a weird feeling.

I mean, at some points in life, 20 years is a huge amount of time. When it's your game clock running out, it doesn't feel so long.

Anyway, it's not really relevant or important, just a reflection on a pond, before my skipping stone breaks up the image.

I haven't talked about Michael in a while. Things are going great between us. We're both deeply in love, very happy with the healthy loving relationship we've built. He's still away for a few weeks, but then he'll be back and we'll get to be together again.

I remain one of the luckiest girls alive.

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