Notices by Joseph Riparian 🏳️‍⚧️ (holyramenempire@kolektiva.social)

A (trans) friend of mine got fired unfairly, and also her work won't make arrangements to take their equipment back. She asks:

"Does anyone know how to factory reset an Elitebook? It has one of those 'bitProtector' things installed."

#HPelitebook #laptops #pchelpdesk

Does anyone have resources for straight (heterosexual) trans folks who are feeling isolated in the broader LGBTQ community for being "not queer enough"? Essays, groups, advice that helped you? I'm asking for a straight guy, but all advice welcome, I meet lots of folks.

#LGBTQ #queer

@MisuseCase I agree with you, and you said it so well.

I am the head of the pack (in my polycule/family). If we're buying a house I choose it. If we're getting dinner I get first pick. We didn't sit down and agree to it, the hierarchy emerged. We're disgustingly happy in it, so idk what to tell people who believe otherwise. Acknowledging where we actually stand, and how we actually use our relational power, made things Just Work in a way that trying to let my Gen X husband have seniority and be "head of household" never did.

This is a serious danger warning, to me.

"Public officials in Tennessee can now refuse to grant a marriage license to anyone at their own discretion, for any reason."

Tennessee Republicans just quietly overturned gay marriage
https://www.advocate.com/politics/tennessee-marriage-licenses-officials-lgbtq#toggle-gdpr

#gay #queer #trans #discrimination

I'd love to hear what a society that accepted and celebrated its #disabled members would look like for you.

I've spent my whole life tied up in really toxic "health-ism" and ableism and I am now disabled. It's a lot to get used to.

@lowies
People believe that under fascism, they will be treated like the in-group, and not have to follow any rules or laws, just like their leaders. By the time they find out otherwise, it's too late to act.
@GottaLaff

This isn't a subtoot of anyone, I'm just responding to something I read earlier and immediately forgot the source of:

The reason that queer and trans people are so afraid right now is not because it's necessarily *worse* for us than it was in the 1990s.

For me, it's worse now because it represents such an incredible backslide from the very recent past. It's also worse now because of how violent, specific, and individual the threats are.

There is a sense that the gloves are off, and hurting us is overtly the point - the veneer of civility is gone. The fact that most people (off the Fediverse, largely) are not responding uniquely to this unique level of hostility is worrying, to me!

There's also a demographic problem happening right now that was never present before: As we come out, and as we choose to be visible, our true number becomes more apparent. The other side doesn't seem very chill about the fact that like three queer or trans people could simultaneously citizen's-arrest every cop in the US!

The transphobes are responding to the actuality of trans people now, not the fictional idea that someone, somewhere, was transgender. That is new, and I think it's dangerous.

#trans #queer

@ghostwise @pluralistic @SidFudd @ProPublica https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-warren-sanders

@jik We've only been trying doomerism and lies, so I don't think we have the data to determine if positivism would work better. (I believe it would. People spend a lot of time protecting things they love, and not much time on things they're frightened of. I have spent 37 years trying to protect wildlife simply because I love the animals.)

@kaia My friend and I have a "great" unethical idea where we will sell a weight-loss supplement that's made out of paper or something, just totally inert. And then we'll run lawyer-solicitation ads on the same channels, saying "Did you lose too much weight taking Joseph's weight loss supplement? Join this class action lawsuit!" There will be no suit, we just need the supplement to seem like it works "too well" and will be banned soon, so people buy it up.

"LGBTQ parents in Southern California are fighting queerphobic hate with 'a fuckton of spray paint' and 'Know your Local Fascist' zines."

We keep us safe!!

Moms Against Fascism - In These Times
https://inthesetimes.com/article/trans-rights-local-fascists-schools

@tamsinsays I wish I remembered who posted it, but I read a neat summation on here yesterday. Basically the poster argued that when comedians become successful, they embark on a big-shot lifestyle, including casual bigotry, and become unrelatable to their audience. So they start telling jokes that bomb, and start looking for someone to blame, and end up thinking that they're being "canceled". The right-wing media lines up to promote that idea, and it becomes the cultural narrative.

when cis people try to write about me:

in case it's relevant, I think trashing the legacy of bad people after they die is good. it reminds the living that people NOTICE what they do, even when we're powerless to stop it.

I used to feel differently, but times were different then!

@LRRRonEarth Even as events began happening, I was still hearing that my certainty was misplaced, that it was "just anxiety". It's really fucked me up to know that when faced with a truly life-threatening situation that I could have helped us navigate, my very own loved ones focused on gaslighting me instead of stocking up on supplies and doing outreach to help folks. I know why they did it - they care about my mental health. But I was fine, and I don't know if I can ever truly forgive them for thinking my anxiety made me unreliable. I am a reliable and trustworthy person, and I don't say things I don't think are true.

It scares me to think that if something truly outrageous and frightening happens to me (my brother comes back to carry out his death threats after he broke my shoulder, for example) that they might not trust and believe me, if the details are bizarre, or I don't relate them perfectly, or if they touch on politics. What then?

@LRRRonEarth Thank you. I'm so sorry for your suffering.

I am struggling with a unique form of COVID trauma. I've been burdened with the knowledge that a pandemic of respiratory disease was going to happen since I was in my early teens. And I knew Trump would win by January 2016, and knew he would lose and refuse to leave office by early 2020, and I was FINALLY gaslit into believing that it was "just anxiety".

People aren't brushing me off the same way anymore, but at what cost? I should have tried harder to keep my people safe. I feel broken by the fact that I spent my whole life trying to become a person that others would believe, a kind and upstanding citizen with a good career, and it was all just such a waste. I could have gone to art school, or dropped out of school at 13 like I wanted to, or learned to play drums, or some other thing *I* would have loved, and it would have been the same, from the perspective of the looming pandemic. No one believed me!!

@FreakyFwoof I love reading and writing alt text. I have suggested a few times that we hand out "Alt Text Awards", because some people write it so beautifully. It's a rare and interesting thing to me; we're finding out what someone else thinks is important about an image.

As a painter, I think I'm going to write future alt text for my work, right on the back of the canvases.

@Tiffany If you think you're autistic, you're probably autistic.

If you and other autistic people think you're autistic, I think that's more valid than a non-autistic doctor diagnosing you. It's not like their criteria were written by an autistic person, anyway, so how would they know?

#ActuallyAutistic

@be I really appreciate you talking about it. My partner's parents are Modern Orthodox, and he was raised in a deeply "cult-y" sect; like, they tried HARD to get him to be in the IDF and be a settler. He's been to Israel several times, and said it was awful, even when he was at the peak of his teenage Zionism.

It has been a really difficult time, interpersonally. Not even a week before everything happened, his dad mailed him a freakin' biography of Bibi as his ONLY birthday present from the family. (My partner said "As a Jew, it pains me to throw out a book, but...")

(I hope this isn't me dumping on you when you're already going through so much - I hope that it backs up the points you're making, that even from way outside the religion, I can see the strain that anti-Zionist Jews are experiencing.)

@e_urq It's also horrifying to me that any adult is focused on a child's "fertility". Absolutely disgusting, and a way to communicate that the kids' lives don't matter, only their reproductive function matters.

It should never cross anyone's mind! And I absolutely loathe that transphobes force us to think about it at all, even in the context of debunking their lying horseshit. >:(