Part 2 of my "transgender social contagion" series just dropped!

Anti-trans campaigners increasingly raise fears about "the rising number of 'young girls' transitioning." This essay delves into the actual statistics, and critiques the sexist & ableist presumptions that inform such framings.

no-paywall link, please share widely & give it lots of "claps" (up to 50) so others see it!

btw, most media outlets wouldn't have allowed me to publish this piece as is. Plus I make very little $ on Medium (especially since I'm always sharing "friend links"). So if you appreciate that I make essays like this freely available online, please consider supporting me on Patreon for as little as $1/month! https://www.patreon.com/juliaserano

Sophia was entering her sophomore year in prep school, but her parents were already thinking ahead to college. They paid to enroll her in an online service called Scholar Launch, whose programs start at $3,500. Scholar Launch, which started in 2019, connects high school students with mentors who work with them on research papers that can be published and enhance their college applications.

Publication “is the objective,” Scholar Launch says on its website. “We have numerous publication partners, all are peer-reviewed journals.”

The prospect appealed to Sophia. “Nowadays, having a publication is kind of a given” for college applicants, she said. “If you don’t have one, you’re going to have to make it up in some other aspect of your application.” [...]

Online research services are an offshoot of the booming college-admissions-advising industry. They draw many of their students from the same affluent population that hires private counselors. Many families that are already paying thousands or tens of thousands of dollars for advice on essay writing and extracurricular activities pay thousands more for research help. Scholar Launch charges $3,500 for “junior” research programs and between $4,500 and $8,800 for advanced research, according to its website.

I got a little snarky and fell short of an ideological turing test attempt, but in case @loving-n0t-heyting hasnt blocked me it's probably important for her to know (since she mentioned equality and fraternity) that most of my eugenics opinions are pretty directly downstream of an ancient will gillis essay called "the impossibility of non anarchist transhumanism"

A radical denialist, a blank slate extremist, is entitled to be an egalitarian who is hostile to transhumanism. Otherwise, hostility to transhumanism is just the divine right of kings.

If people inherit traits from their parents even when you control for social factors or inequities, then then the egalitarian's preferred technology is editing genes in prod. I dont think its complicated.

Hobbling biotech is remarkably castist.

Cheap over the counter IQ pills is a better weapon against inequality than unions.

berries

How an Armadillo gathers foliage for its nest.

When I'm carrying all the bags of groceries inside in one trip.

they should make a pill that makes people in their 20s feel good about where their lives are going

Impressive to me that no one said the same thing twice

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, how the fuck would you even enforce that?

"Oh want to use the bathroom? I'll just need you to produce an egg real quick".

Reddit thread

Chicken only bathrooms. Not the animal rights move we wanted-

POV: you (human) (not a fetus) have illegally entered a public women's bathroom in Kansas

It's impossible to define woman in a way that excludes all trans women and doesn't exclude any cis women, but defining women in a way that excludes all human women trans or cis is a pretty amazing fuckup.

*sees two bees flying around my garden* me: i wonder.,. if…. they’re friends..

Cave fish time!!

Cryptotora thamicola or the waterfall climbing cave fish are extremely rare, found in only eight caves on the border of Thailand and Myanmar. Like most cave fish they are blind and pigmentless but what makes them special is there ability to cling to walls and climb up flowing water.

One of my favorite animals hardly anyone talks about!

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

Okay, let's try this without the errors and casual domestic abuse references and classism/racism!

All of the below may be worn "because I like how they look." When I say what they're worn for, I mean the intended practical intention of their design.

This is a compression tee or workout tee. They are usually made out of synthetic materials for moisture-wicking purposes. They are worn for exercise or workouts, to draw sweat away from the skin.

This is a muscle tank. It is worn for working out (lifting weights, most often) or showing off one's muscles.

This is a sleeveless tee. Note the different sizes of the armholes. This is pretty much just a fashion statement, two tickets to the gun show, etc. but sometimes worn at the gym.

This is an A-shirt, ribbed knit tank, or fitted knit tank. In the US it may colloquially be called a "wifebeater," but that's classist, racist, and fucking gross, so knock it off.

Originally intended as an undershirt, may be worn as a primary shirt. Still worn as an undershirt by many men/mascs.

This is a fitted tee. They come in crew necks (pictured) and v-necks, typically. These also started as undershirts and are often still worn as same, but now are often worn as casual shirts as well. The difference between one intended as a casual shirt and one intended as an undershirt is mostly just fabric weight.

This is a tee shirt, also known as a heavyweight tee (a reference to fabric weight), loose-fit tee, or unisex tee. Intended as casual wear.

This is a polo shirt. Usually worn fitted and tucked in as shown, unless being worn with shorts. This is a "dress casual" sort of shirt, the kind of thing a person might wear to a semi-nice dinner out with family during the summer, but it's also part of the work uniforms of a lot of working-class people now, so.

This is a Henley or y-neck. Usually 3-5 buttons at the neck and made of cotton knit. This started as underwear too - a warm layer for winter - and is still used that way, often layered with camp shirts, chamois shirts or flannels. Also worn alone. These are pretty common chores/work shirts in my experience.

This is a camp shirt or work shirt. It is made of broadcloth, denim, canvas, or another sturdy material. Worn either as an outer layer unbuttoned over a tee, tank or henley, or if it's a nice shirt in good shape you can button it up and tuck it in and get away with wearing it to a semi-casual thing, like a weekday dinner with friends or an event at church/synagogue which isn't a service, like a potluck or a meeting.

These can often be bought lined or quilted and used as a light jacket. I used these for throwing on real quick when going to bring in wood so the wood wouldn't chew up my forearms.

Now THIS is a flannel. The difference is this is made out of flannel.

Everything I said above applies to this, except flannel shirts are more "casual" than a nice camp shirt bc the material is softer.

Flannel. Shirts. Don't. Have. To. Be. Plaid. A lot of them are, but I own/owned plenty of solid color flannel shirts. I don't care for these as much for chores bc the soft material means stuff is more likely to poke through, but they're great for layering.

I'm out of pictures so hang on, adding more.

This is a chamois shirt. It's another kind of work shirt, it's just made out of a different material. I owned like 900 of these when I was in high school, they were my favorites. From a practical standpoint I liked them better than flannels, even though flannels were more fashionable.

All three of these shirt types are really practical shirts. People wear them bc they look good, yes, but like, people wear flannels in the PNW bc it rains all the fucking time and I wore camp shirts bc I didn't like tearing up my arms or getting ticks.

These are BOTH going to be listed as a "dress shirt" on most websites bc SEO is a fucking plague. (David and Jake and I just spent 3 fucking weeks debating renaming our shirts and doing SEO research, yes, they BOTH get called dress shirts.)

You may see the one on the right called a "button up" or "button-up." Both are correct ways to spell the term. The one on the right is more dress casual, the one on the left, office wear or formal.

The difference between the shirt on the right and the shirts above is fabric and cut. The above shirts have thicker, sturdier fabrics and tend to be cut looser or more square. The blue shirt below is made of a light woven (sometimes knit) fabric, usually cotton, though satin, silk, linen and bamboo can also be found. It's also usually more fitted.

The dress shirt on the left is pretty much invariably made of cotton and is sometimes starched. You never wear a knit dress shirt (though you may layer a polo shirt with a blazer for a dressed-up casual look, like being a manager at a car dealership or a realtor or going to a summer wedding) and for formal looks you would generally not wear something like silk for the shirt if it's cut like this. It doesn't hold clean lines and tends to look sloppy.

When you get into dress shirts, though, that's like a whole other world in terms of collars and cuffs and so on, so I'll stop here.

Adding a brief cultural note to the very useful post: If you're reading stuff set in the UK and you come across a description of someone wearing a vest, that's probably something along the lines of the A-shirt/ribbed knit tank/fitted knit tank shown above, especially if they're wearing it under a shirt that buttons up or wearing it as pyjamas (someone who's sleeping in 'a vest and pants' in the UK is wearing an A-shirt and boxers/briefs, not a waistcoat and trousers).

Oh is THAT what Granny Weatherwax meant when she said "I've got three vests on"?! All this time I was like "I mean it's Granny, she might be wearing three waistcoats under her dress."

G-d, that makes so much more sense.

Yep! It's "I'm wearing multiple layers of underclothes" in context (also in a way that codes very specifically crotchety elderly person, though I can't quite explain why)

Also worth noting that in UK a dress shirt means something like this:

A shirt for wearing with a tuxedo (which we'd traditionally refer to as a dinner jacket, or evening dress) with a pleated or marcella front, possibly with a wing collar and almost always white

What Americans would call a dress shirt we'd call a formal shirt (or just a shirt if we didn't think we needed to clarify), which I think is the exact reverse of how the US refers to them

No, that's called a tuxedo shirt in the US because you wear it with a tuxedo. It's a specific specialty shirt to be worn with only one kind of jacket (a tuxedo jacket, and yes, I know there are many different cuts of jacket but they're all tuxedo jackets) and (generally) only one style of tie, so it's referred to in the context in which it is properly worn, using the more specific term.

A dress shirt may be worn with multiple styles of jacket - a blazer, sport coat, tweed, suit jacket, etc. - and multiple styles of tie, so it gets the more generic term.

Oh, and we call the pleated front of a tuxedo shirt the "bib."

Note the following rules vary across the US but as the mid Atlantic and New England areas tend to be the most formal…

If someone says to wear “black tie” it’s a tuxedo and evening gown affair. So you’ll see men in bib shirts and bow ties, possibly a vest or possibly a cummerbund, and tuxedo jacket.

If it says “formal” the men will most likely be in dress shirts, a tie tied in a Windsor or four-in-hand knot, a suit jacket and matching suit pants. Think “funeral outfit” as many middle class men only own one full suit.

“Business formal” is the same as formal except the purchaser is wearing up to five suits a week so it isn’t likely to be their “best suit”. This has way more to do with the industry you work in than your salary. When I was a wee pup in IT, I worked for a financial company that required business formal of anyone customer facing *even if that meant over the phones*. Most of us kept this week’s suit jacket in a hook on a cubicle and didn’t actually wear it unless someone of higher rank was coming down for a meeting.

Across jobs, people I saw in suits every day were middle managers and people working at the mall. This was the ‘90s and 00s when a suit jacket meant srs bsns, so most folks making $7.25 an hour had more suits than folks making $27.25 an hour. If you were working in a high-end luxury store (selling pool tables for example) and somebody came in looking like it was laundry day (wearing their most mismatched clothes) they were most likely rich enough to buy everything in the store.

A suit jacket didn’t necessarily mean suit pants — suit pants are tailored to fit you, dress pants are essentially the same fabric but off the rack. There’s also differences in the sheen of the fabric and whether they’d be destroyed if you had to crawl under a desk but I won’t get into those here.

“Business casual” in most places (for men) means “it has a collar”. Dress shirts without (or if your company was a bag of assholes, with) a tie, probably with the tie button unbuttoned. Polo shirts. Turtlenecks probably ok especially in a sweater vest. Polos could have discreet company logos. Shirts made out of chambray (a blue denim-like fabric) would fly in some places but not others. No jackets required but also if you’re wearing flannel or chamois, or a work shirt, it has to be buttoned. High-end khakis are allowed but cargo pants and shorts are right out.

Casual: it has to be clean, it has to fit you, it can’t have any holes, logos must be professional and discreet or not present (the bud light tee is a no), it must have sleeves. Jeans, khakis, cargo pants, but not always shorts. Also, work pants but depending on who you work with that might be a signal that you’re interviewing.

Blue collar work was fittingly often work shirts, tee shirts underneath, and heavyweight jeans or denim overalls. Khakis if you’re the job lead. These might have changed since my last factory job 20+ years ago.

These are mostly work definitions; what Aunt Lucy meant by “casual” for your grandmother’s 75th birthday party might be different and if you screw it up she’ll still be mad at your 75th birthday party.

Lolsing at the "that might be a sign you're interviewing". Taking a half-day and wearing more formal clothes than usual is a good way to get your boss nervous, lols.

Also, I worked at a David Yurman store (high end women's And men's non-wedding jewelry, very classy but suitable for everyday wear by people of a certain class. You might not know the name but you would probably find their flagship cable bracelet familiar) for 1 whole week (it sucked, because standing stock still for 12 hours is miserable) but I learned a Lot, and I quickly learned that guys wearing nice well-fitted jeans and t-shirt were the ones who were going to spend a 4 digit number or even a low 5 digit number (for multiple pieces for themselves and at least one other person, usually wives or mothers, but sometimes daughters or GF) without hesitation or flinching.

I'm sure tumblr would never, but hey. No sense tempting fate.

they do

what if I just bought a nice sheet and wore it like some ancient Greek instead of fucking around with trying to buy clothes online

I do this as work-wear sometimes. Literally wear a chiton while farming when the weather is right for it.

you know that wonderful feeling of breathing through your nose unobstructed by snot? yeah I'm currently not experiencing that, thanks for asking

When this happens to me, I sprinkle some menthol crystals into a bowl of boiling water and huff the fumes.

Do Bug Zappers Work? Yeah—About As Well As Any Other Indiscriminate Wildlife Slaughter.

Bug zappers kill bugs by the thousands. But there’s a problem: They kill the wrong bugs. They are ineffective against mosquitoes and other biting flies, and their otherwise indiscriminate killing can disrupt pollination and generally throw the environment out of balance. Plus, the force of their electrocution can spew a mist of disease-ridden bug parts out into the air. All of the mosquito experts we spoke with and every relevant university extension office we could find unanimously condemned bug zappers. To keep an area free of bugs or to prevent yourself from getting bitten, there are much better alternatives.

Read more:

I know why "prefered pronouns" and "prefered name" were retired from the vocabulary (it's way more than a matter of preference) but in retrospect it feels like a successful psyop to make transphobes sound absolutely incoherent.

Griping about people having "prefered pronouns": legible, clearly indicates what they have a problem with (trans people existing and being respected), makes you a huge unreasonable asshole but one whose grievances can at least be parsed for some kind of meaning.

Griping about people just having "pronouns": Incoherent, you are angry at a part of speech. Old man yells at cloud moment. Your hatred is so blinding that you can't hide that you have no idea what you're talking about and you look like a child throwing a tantrum except a child has probably been in an english class recently enough to know what a pronoun is.

Anyway we should do this with more stuff. Let's just call transitioning puberty exclusively until we get right wing grifters saying that puberty is unnatural and if you've gone through it you're a freak on their shitty little youtube channels.