"Who would choose to be trans?" More and more, I'm thinking I would. Yes, it has meant more than half my life I've been fighting transphobia. Yes, it has led to physical damage and scars I still bear. Yes, it has led to mental trauma that will always haunt me. And still...I think I would choose this. In this community, I can have an effect. I can actively work to make things better for my people, in any way I want to. I have that freedom because I've long since gotten used to the poverty, and comfortable with living under it. The big change I'd make in my life (other than transitioning earlier, which, yeah, I think many of us feel that one) is that I'd ignore the rat-bastards at the gender clinic, and jump straight into the trans community back in 1992. I waited 30 years before I finally took that plunge, and it's by far the biggest regret I have, is that I lost all that time being among my people. Because my people are smart, funny, caring, insightful, pretty, handsome, sexy either way, and just generally pretty fantastic folk. I know there are exceptions, but I don't have to deal with most of those. Instead I get a community that looks after one another, lifts each other up, mentors new members of the community. That will support one another against the very weight of an entire government, a world of governments, that hate us and wish we would go away. The average trans person among this community knows more about their own medical care than most doctors. Knows how to navigate the byzantine stupid laws and hoops we have to jump to be ourselves. And most of us are, pretty reliably, well left of centre politically. We believe in social-benefit goals for a living system, rather than Line Go Up For Bigger Dragon Hoard goals. In other words, if you carefully constructed a fictional community of trans people? It probably wouldn't be as good as the real thing. So who would choose this? Me.
Hi! New activism. I'm interrupting my weekend off to ask if there are any people out there with the time and energy to compile a list of recently-passed US laws, state by state and federally, which are aimed at oppressing trans people? I'm asking because I *think* we have a second potential US trans person's asylum claim to press in Canada, and I want to arm the immigration lawyer with a lot of references to the effects of state and federal laws in restricting trans and nonbinary people from living. It's possible this already exists. If it does, and you know about it, by all means lay it on me, sibling. If not, the urgency on this would be a few weeks, maybe a month? If a team of folk want to work on it and divide the work, that's awesome too. However you want to work it. I'm organising a team to help this person. What we're going to need, first and foremost, are donors. Do we have anyone who might be able to contribute to a fund for this person? They've been thrown out of the marital home by a racist and abusive husband, and have only a couple of hundred dollars in their account, while they sleep at a shelter. If you can help, DM me here or contact me on Signal at oldladyplays.11, and mention ZB as your sign of what you're here about. Second, a longer shot. This one's open to anyone in or around the Kamloops area. Our potential asylee is currently in a shelter in the 'loops, and it'd sure be nice if we could get them out of there. If you know anyone who could put up a tenant for what could be several months, I'm going to be trying to raise money to provide rent to such a person. They don't need a lot - a bed, a room, a dresser maybe? Even a small one? Again, a DM here with non-Fedi contact info, or requesting mine, will serve, or again Signal at oldladyplays.11 My other tasks I can accomplish by other means, but those two I could really use help with. #Kamloops #TransMutualAid
A thought about public transit. Why do we have to pay for it? We built it. It was our tax money and our labour and our commonly-held land. The buses and trains we bought, we paid for. The people who drive them? We pay that. So why do we charge people to use it? We don't charge road users to use the roads. "We pay for them," the drivers say. "So do we pay for them," say I. "We have to have insurance!" "So do transit vehicles." "We have to pay for our go-juice of choice!" "Us too." "We have to pay to maintain our own vehicles." "Yep, that's a pain for us too." So why, exactly, do we provide use of the roads free to people who have the money to have their own vehicle, but NOT to the people who *don't* have that money, or choose not to spend it on a car for all kinds of society-benefiting reasons? It's ridiculous. In order to facilitate the fare collection, we have to have MORE POLICE in our lives, people going up and down the LRT trains, bothering people trying to journey, and writing expensive tickets if they find someone forgot to tap their card on the out-of-the-way pedestals for such. How many hundreds of thousands are we paying in the salary for that couple of dozen people? Do we come even CLOSE to recovering that money by catching so-called "fare cheats"? No. Nothing like it. It's a big ripoff, in favour of individual car use, and allows them to underfund our public transit so that it can take me an hour and a quarter to get to an appointment a private vehicle could reach in fifteen minutes, because it's about five km from my apartment. But in our rattletrap system, that's 3 buses. This kind of thinking is burning our planet and our people alive. And still we hem and haw about whether it's worth the expenditure, and make it easy for people to live 100+km from their place of work - and yet still attend every day. Madness!
Okay, this is going to piss me off but good. Brigitte Macron is NOT being accused of being a man. That is a viciously transphobic thing to say. She has been "accused" of being a TRANS WOMAN. Which, I remind you, is not, in fact, illegal in France. So "accused" is doing a probably illegal amount of lifting there. Now, she is *not* a trans woman. The kids she's borne make that pretty clear. But those outlets saying "they're saying she's a MAN!" are sensationalising the case, *by throwing trans people under the bus*. It's infuriating. Bad enough that Mme. Macron is out there saying that it was "devastating" to be called trans, like being trans is the worst possible thing in the world to be. She's a centre-right rich woman, so of course she's saying that. But to have leftists out here saying "they're calling her a MAN!" is really on my tits. Fucking STOP it. Assholes.
I realised something this afternoon, in talking with a friend. I have reached my limit of cis people telling me how to be trans. Or not to be trans. Or choosing what we're called. Or really having any kind of control over our lives at all, for any reason. I don't care if they're professional sexologists, or transvestigators, or whatever they're going to call cis people who colonise our space academically. Or doctors, or politicians, or anyone else, ever. I'm done. Cis people, there's a bunch of ya I love, but I swear, the next cis person who tells me how to do trans is probably going to soon regret it, when the sharp side of my tongue has finished tearing them various new orifices, metaphorically speaking. We get to choose what we call ourselves. Be it trans, nonbinary, hijra, two-spirit, travesti, ladyboy (kathoey), whatever someone identifies as. If they feel they have a claim on that label, it's no one else's place to tell them they haven't. Least of all cis people. Magneto was right.
Global News
Non-binary person’s U.S. deportation paused due to risks faced by LGBTQ+ people - National | Globalnews.ca
A non-binary person, with U.S. citizenship, will temporarily remain in Canada after their deportation order was paused citing potential dangers fac...
 #CanPoli #trans So this story. My take. 2 years ago, I lodged petition e-4268, to the federal government, requesting that they suspend the Safe Third Country agreement for the US and UK, because it was clear that trans and nonbinary people were under oppressive attack by both countries. We gathered 167k signatures, the third highest number in Canadian Parliamentary history (at the time). The government responded that "Look, we have a Safe Third Country Agreement, we can't violate it, they're designated, and besides, we already do this." I checked. They do it, alright. 640 applicants in eight years. TWO granted. So...petition failed. And here we are, two years and a couple of months later, and now a federal court Judge (and bless her, she's Indigenous, Canada's (shamefully) first Indigenous judge on the federal court) has said, "Yes, you were right, this immigration officer who decided to deport this person had clearly failed to take into account the current status of anti-LGBTQ repression in the US. And the government needs to quickly revisit the Safe Third Country Agreement, to see whether it should be given an exemption for trans and nonbinary people." So. If the government appeals, it will take months for this to be resolved. Probably, if usual timelines hold, into next year. That's important to note. And then the government will, almost certainly, have to decide what to do. Publicly. They will either have to produce evidence that trans and nonbinary people are safe in the US (which is like saying "prove that the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny aren't having an affair", and equally as likely), or accept the court's recommendation and carve out an exemption for trans and nonbinary people in the S3CA. 1/2
Was watching video of the MAGA Meltdown about the Epstein files, taking a little bath in the Schadenfreude, when I came across one video in particular. And it got me thinking. The speaker was a young woman. I recognised her immediately, of course, as any trans person in the US probably would, she's Riley Gaines, that Very Important Swimmer, who came fifth one time in that race, tied with Lia Thomas? And I thought, wow, what a great grift. I mean, you're a mediocre university-level swimmer, right? You're never going anywhere in the sport, you don't win events, and so when uni comes to an end, you'll go and get a job like everyone else and just drudge your way through life. But no! She came FIFTH that one time! And the fifth-place she got was STOLEN FROM HER by a TRANS WOMAN who's REALLY A MAN and is FAR TOO DANGEROUS AND PHYSICALLY OVERWHELMING for poor cis women swimmers! PROVEN by her finishing (checks notes)...also fifth. Behind four other cis women. Hmm. But now, voila! See her shiny new career? Making well-compensated "speeches" at conservative hate rallies, bemoaning that ruinous trans woman and how she ruined everything for her. Of course, Thomas did no such thing. She *also* finished fifth. Both got medals, and were listed as fifth. If Lia Thomas weren't there, Gaines would have finished...fifth. Which they were. She didn't get moved down a spot. She wasn't denied anything. She simply had to share. And this OUTRAGE was sufficient to earn her a multi-year speaking career as a professional victim of the EVIL TRANSES. Just in case you needed a stunningly clear example of how the right-wing outrage machine works. She went from being a fifth-place middle-talent swimmer, to being a well-paid C-List celebrity in the Bigotsphere. She will live comfortably for years on her weaponising of her (checks notes) complete lack of harm in that race. Astroturf victimhood as business model.
We need to work on our legal system. I've heard WAY too many people who simply know better saying things like "well, this is an 'act of god'" about flash flooding. No. It is not. And we need to fix the law to get rid of that ridiculous ancient construct. There are no "acts of god", according to the law, or there shouldn't be. I have freedom of religion. How do I have that if my insurance company can say "act of god" and I'm not allowed to collect on the insurance? When I acknowledge no such entity? Flash floods, wildfires, mudslides, polar vortices, all of this. None of it is an "act of god". They're all acts which are the direct consequence of HUMAN BEHAVIOUR. We have to stop allowing people to say "oh, well, sky daddy did it" and shrugging when it comes to helping people live through climate change. Time we bloody well grew up.
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.
Hey! If you're looking for an absolute firehose of good opinion and analysis, why aren't you following @npub18x75...p6e7? She's wikkid smaht, her politics are awesome, she's comfortably multilingual...and she posts or boosts about 70,000 times a day. I think. I've never tried to count.