@fozmeadows / fozmeadows.tumblr.com
Con O’Neill, MCM Comic Con panel with Nathan Foad and Kristian Nairn, London May 27, 2023
Q: As someone who was a teenager for Section 28 Part 1, I just want to […] say a massive thank you for speaking up about Section 28 Part 2. What’s it been like at the moment, working on a show that has got such cool and interesting things to say about gender broadly and masculinity more specifically?
Text of thread at https://kolektiva.social/@zinnia/110418489814171631:
Yes - this is what is happening in Florida due to SB 254, which was signed into law on Tuesday 5/17/2023, taking immediate effect. This immediately cut off 80%+ of adult trans people in Florida from having their HRT refilled, because SB 254 uniquely prohibits only nurse practitioners from prescribing only gender-affirming medications.
This has already been in effect for 7 days now.
Trans adults in Florida have already been cut off from their HRT refills for a week now, including those of us who have been stable on these medications for years or decades.
This is VERY different from the general situation of trans youth care bans in 19 states, many still working their way through the courts.
This has *already* happened, to *all* of us: all trans adults in the third most populous state in the US.
The number of trans adults on HRT massively exceeds the sliver of the population that are under 18 and are prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy.
These laws, advanced under the pretext of 'protecting children', are now directly impacting a far larger group of people who are not children and are not subject to those pretextual concerns.
Other arguments about withholding public Medicaid funding for transition treatment also do not apply here: SB 254 does not even allow receiving this care through private insurance or paying cash out of pocket. The care isn't simply not covered - the care itself cannot be provided regardless.
What is happening in Florida requires special attention above the situation of trans youth care bans nationally. This is having a vastly larger impact quantifiably.
It will have worse impacts qualitatively as well: adults are responsible for taking care of and protecting trans kids and making sure they do not hurt themselves.
Whereas as a trans adult, we have no one standing guard at the brink but our own self and the void to which we are accountable.
These are the facts as they stand right now. These are the facts as they have stood for a WEEK and NO ONE nationally is putting any attention on this because there are 19 trans youth care bans all across the country going on, along with everything else targeting trans people and the LGBT community broadly.
This is a specific harm that is happening now and has been happening for 168 hours.
It is not a hypothetical issue to raise awareness of, as if it were at the stage of some proposal that needs to be fought back. This has already happened and is happening right now. Active harm is happening until this law is rolled back.
For all of Florida's history since the inception of the applicable regulatory and licensing bodies, nurse practitioners have been allowed to prescribe hormone therapy, testosterone blockers and other relevant gender-affirming medications.
That has been the case since I moved here in 2011. There was no reason why this wouldn't be the case. It's also the case in every other state.
This new law is a carveout of prescriptions when used for one purpose, gender-affirming care, from nurse practitioners specifically, in a way that has never been done before. It affects all ages.
It has immediately obstructed access to HRT prescription refills for more than 80% of TRANS ADULTS in Florida.
It has also prohibited first appointments for HRT via telehealth with in-state or out-of-state MDs or DOs - first appointments must be in person. This will require expensive and time-consuming travel that is beyond most trans people's means: driving to Georgia from Florida can take 8 hours.
This was an intentional targeting of almost all trans adults in Florida, and the means by which we have received our generic, FDA-approved medications for years. And it included closing every possible door that would let us find another way to keep taking the medications we have taken for...
Well, for me it was 3,891 days when the clock stopped
UPDATE 5/23/2023: There was a Joint Rules Committee teleconference meeting of the Board of Medicine, Board of Osteopathic Medicine and Board of Pharmacy this afternoon at 12:30 PM Eastern. (Meeting information, meeting agenda)
That means some of the members of the Florida Boards of Medicine - the same ones responsible for passing the trans youth care ban, at the behest of the ACPeds-ghostwritten AHCA report - were in attendance. (More on the AHCA report behind the Boards' trans youth care bans)
These members included: Hector Vila, who incorrectly asserted in November that about five traveling detransition campaigners had experienced the worst medical harm to happen in Florida over the last quarter of a century. (See section 10)
As well as Monica Mortensen of pediatric endocrinology at Nemours Jacksonville. She submitted a letter of support for the Board of Medicine's trans youth care bans in which she favorably referenced a case report of a trans teenager held in a psychiatric hospital for two years as conversion therapy. Then Ron DeSantis appointed her to the Board of Osteopathic Medicine.
During the meeting in a period of audience comment, I asked this brief and on-topic question relating to the issue at hand of pharmacists serving as prescribers in concert with physicians, specialists, case management and others:
"We’ve heard a lot about how important it is to find ways pharmacists can facilitate safe access to management of complex chronic conditions. And again, as it’s been said by Dr. Mesaros, sometimes that can be a matter of ‘bodies in the streets’ as he put it. And I appreciate that. My question is for the Boards of Medicine on prescribing practices and mental health, in this case a concern about the current implementation of practice standards.
I am a consumer advocate with Gender Analysis for the transgender community. We’ve previously had correspondence with the Boards of Medicine on related rule proposals last year. Trans people receiving specialist care for substance use are a part of the community of people in recovery. Last week’s passage of SB 254 immediately kept almost all trans people from refilling their hormone therapy when it was prescribed by nurse practitioners. We know patients being forced to physician-hop is a problem, but they cannot hop to anywhere now. Even MDs and DOs are not prescribing because they do not have the emergency rule consent forms from the Boards of Medicine yet.
Being taken off their stable medications abruptly for no reason can put people into a state of crisis, including people who are struggling with substance use. Our focus centers for the treatment of gender dysphoria with hormone therapy mostly can no longer provide that medication, and patients are already being harmed by this. This was not a medical decision in the treatment of their cases, this was an external decision that kept their providers, with ongoing relationships with them, from continuing to offer them that care. That was a long-running status quo that suddenly changed last week. And that entire therapeutic frame has been completely de-delegated from the providers and the patients.
We would like to ask the Boards of Medicine when MDs and DOs should expect the emergency rule consent forms for hormone therapy for adults. And in the interim while we wait for those rules, what best practices should our providers currently follow for prescribing this? Thank you for your time."
There were approximately 10 seconds of silence that seemed to stretch on and on. The chair said "Thank you for your comments" and waited about 20 more seconds for any others to respond. Only silence.
Then they moved on to another subject, never bringing up anything about this question or related issues again, but talking at quite some length about how pharmacists can get paid and make money from participating in community collaboration programs.
The meeting audio will be available later.
While I wait for the cowards on the Florida Boards of Medicine to upload the meeting audio of their shameful silence today, here is a policy diagram explaining exactly how nearly all trans adults in Florida are no longer able to fill their HRT prescriptions:
NO OPTIONS LEFT: Florida Adult Trans Care Ban Interlocking Policies Chart by Zinnia Jones, GenderAnalysis.net — current as of 5/23/2023
START HERE
Patient age: Under 18/18 or over?
Under 18: Care not available through any provider
18 or over: Provider: MD/DO or NP/APRN/other?
NP/APRN: NPs, APRNs and other providers cannot prescribe HRT for adults after 5/17/2023 (S.B. 254)
MORE THAN 80% OF TRANS ADULTS IN FLORIDA RECEIVE THEIR HRT PRESCRIPTION THROUGH AN NP/APRN
MD/DO: Date: Before 7/16/2023, or 7/17/2023 or later?
After 7/16/2023 or once emergency rules are issued: MDs/DOs can write HRT prescriptions under rules and consent forms issued by BoM/BoOM (rules unknown until day of publication) (S.B. 254)
ADULTS -MIGHT- BE ABLE TO RECEIVE NEW HRT PRESCRIPTIONS FROM MDs/DOs BY MID-JULY
Before 7/16/2023: Prescription type: New prescription or refill of existing prescription?
New prescription: MDs/DOs cannot write new HRT prescriptions for adults until BoM/BoOM "emergency rule" state-written mandatory informed consent forms are published for use (any time before 7/16) (S.B. 254)
Existing prescription: MDs/DOs can continue to renew existing HRT prescriptions for adults
Note: This remaining sliver is the only way trans adults in Florida can access their prescribed HRT as of 5/17/2023.
TAKE ACTION NOW:
LEARN more about how Florida legislators and state agencies inflicted this injury on the trans community: by hiring conversion therapists and a recognized hate group to write state policy. trans.sh/experts
HELP by giving to the Central Florida Emergency Trans Care Fund tinyurl.com/CFLTransFund
ACT to make your voice heard by the Boards of Medicine at their Joint Rules Committee meeting on the proposed mandatory informed consent forms for adults!
Thursday, June 1 2:45 PM The Westshore Grand 4860 West Kennedy Boulevard Tampa, FL 33609
FLORIDA TRANS CARE BAN POLICY CHART UPDATE 5/25/2023
(Please feel free to share ANYWHERE)
Clarifications on telehealth, and changing adult HRT refills from available to unavailable.
Over the past week since the enactment of SB 254 with immediate effect, trans people across Florida have reported that they haven't consistently been able to get their HRT prescriptions refilled even from MDs and DOs, due to uncertainty while the Board of Medicine mandatory consent forms have not been issued yet.
This is causing irreversible damage to us right now. This is torture. The Florida GOP and the agency lapdogs of the DeSantis administration are responsible!
This is bad, folks.
Possibly the greatest NPR exchange ever recorded
Ew dude gross, don't put your faith in me, I don't know where it's been.
So what I’ve learned from the past couple months of being really loud about being a bi woman on Tumblr is: A lot of young/new LGBT+ people on this site do not understand that some of the stuff they’re saying comes across to other LGBT+ people as offensive, aggressive, or threatening. And when they actually find out the history and context, a lot of them go, “Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I never meant to say that.”
Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”
So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it.
That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender.
When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.
And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.
But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.
But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”
And that? That gives me hope for the future.
Similarily: “Dyke/butch/femme are lesbian words, bisexual/pansexual women shouldn’t use them.”
When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?
And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.
“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.
Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.
(This despite the fact that radical feminists and political lesbians are actually a small fraction of lesbians and wlw, and lesbians do tend, overall, to have positive attitudes towards bisexuals.)
That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..
So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.
And once I’ve explained it, I’ve had a heartening number of lesbians go, “That’s not what I wanted to happen, so I’m going to stop saying that.”
This is good information for people who carry on with the “queer is a slur” rhetoric and don’t comprehend the push back.
ive been saying for years that around 10 years ago on tumblr, it was only radfems who were pushing the queer as slur rhetoric, and everyone who was trans or bi or allies to them would push back - radfems openly admitted that the reason they disliked the term “queer” was because it lumped them in with trans people and bi women. over the years, the queer is a slur rhetoric spread in large part due to that influence, but radfems were more covert about their reasons - and now it’s a much more prevalent belief on tumblr - more so than on any queer space i’ve been in online or offline - memory online is very short-term unfortunately bc now i see a lot of ppl, some of them bi or trans themselves, who make this argument and vehemently deny this history but…yep
Or asexuality, which has been a concept in discussions on sexuality since 1869. Initially grouped slightly to the left, as in the categories were ‘heterosexual’, ‘homosexual’, and ‘monosexual’ (which is used differently now, but then described what we would call asexuality). Later was quite happily folded in as a category of queerness by Magnus Hirschfeld and Emma Trosse in the 1890s, as an orientation that was not heterosexuality and thus part of the community.
Another good source here, also talking about aromanticism as well. Aspec people have been included in queer studies as long as queer studies have existed.
Also, just in my own experiences, the backlash against ‘queer’ is still really recent. When I was first working out my orientation at thirteen in 2000, there was absolutely zero issue with the term. I hung out on queer sites, looked for queer media, and was intrigued by queer studies. There were literally sections of bookstores in Glebe and Newtown labelled ‘Queer’. It was just… there, and so were we!
So it blows my mind when there are these fifteen-year-olds earnestly telling me - someone who’s called themself queer longer than they’ve been alive - that “que*r is a slur.” Unfortunately, I have got reactive/defensive for the same reasons OP has mentioned. I will absolutely work on biting down my initial defensiveness and trying to explain - in good faith - the history of the word, and how it’s been misappropriated and tarnished by exclusionists.
Worth noting here is a sneaky new front I’ve seen radfems start using:
Yeah, okay, maybe older LGBTs use queer and fag and dyke…but they’re cringey, and you don’t want to be cringe, do you?
I’m not even joking. They strip the loud-and-proud aspects of our history out of all context, remove every bit of blood, sweat, and tears the queer community poured into things like anti-discrimination laws and AIDS research funding, and use those screams of rebellion to say we’re weird, and you wouldn’t want to be WEIRD.
Stop and think about that for a minute.
Yeah. They are not the arbiters of our community and they never were, and it’s important to not give them the time of day.
All of this. #WGAStrong
I’m not on Twitter anymore, but I see John Rogers is still there bringing the fire. As I think I mentioned here a while back, I’m not in the WGA yet -- applied, after writing the script for the Fifth Season film, but obviously everything’s on hold given this. (The script was being revised, but since the strike’s been called it’s “pencils down.”)
And the stakes are exactly as high as what John lays out here. I’ve already seen any number of absolute garbage takes on this -- dismissing screenwriters as rich hacks who just want to get richer, stupidly suggesting that only some workers should matter (as if that won’t get weaponized against all of us), and worse. But whether y’all want to believe it or not, creative workers are workers, and the WGA is fighting for all of us right now.
#WGAStrong
So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.
I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.
See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.
I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.
Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.
In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.
They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.
Conservatives lost their damn minds.
Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.
When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.
Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America.
Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”
Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.
The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.
This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.
Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.
The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.
I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.
Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.
Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.
The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.
That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.
They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.
So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.
We have! To keep! Pushing back!
Someone reblogged this saying they'd never heard any of this before and they didn't even know how to begin verifying it, so let me help!
Here's a 1995 article from the NYT about Disney putting this policy into effect after promising to do so in 1994.
Here's a wikipedia page about Disney's unofficial Gay Days and how they've been protested by Christian groups.
I tried to find the book I read, but honestly so many different weird evangelical anti-Disney books came up when I was googling that I can't be sure which one it was. 🙃
I can't help you with sources other than the fact that I too am an exvangelical kid whose parents went on-and-off banning Disney movies from the house as I was growing up. ("On" when the pastor got on a tear about the evils and how the movies had gay propaganda in it and ~witchcraft~ and my mom would obediently remove anything from my reach that had the concept of "magic" in it - and then "Off" when the pastor hadn't said anything for a while and my mom got sentimental about how much she loved Winnie the Pooh and The Aristocats.)
I remember the first "Gay Days" and how they put up signs around the park saying that it was unofficial and not affiliated with Disney, and how that didn't stop the evangelicals from foaming at the mouth, and the groups had to change it to "Friendship Days" to keep from getting gay-bashed... and I also remember how the last time I went to Gay Days (2019) they had fucking Pride merch in the stores with signs saying that proceeds from the sales went to GLSEN to prevent gay kids from being bullied at school.
Disney has done a LOT to normalize queerness in the mainstream - and I know it's a joke, blah blah, first canon Disney queers being a new minor character every year, but outside of the movies, in the real world where real people live, it has done a LOT.
And yeah. You want Disney to wipe the floor with these dudes. Because as evil as some of their business practices are (capitalism sucks, man, and there's no getting around that) - I HAVE to emphasize that they have been curating a safe space for real-life queer people for decades. And we want that to win.
The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend, but they're sure as hell a gigantic mouse-shaped meat shield, and right now we need the enemy out of bullets.
Corporations in FL and TX are watching this. Red state governors are watching this. A victory for Disney means more companies pushing back. A victory for Florida means an absolute avalanche of restrictions on LGBTQ+ people, corporate support of reproductive rights, etc.
We NEED Disney to win.
some doods from A Strange and Stubborn Endurance
<3 <3 <3
your honor, I am obsessed with them (the characters of A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows) (Especially Liran, he is everything to me)
ID in Alt
1/20 Queer Book Draw Challenge
<3 <3 <3
hi! I loved A Strange and Stubborn Endurance and have been meaning to pick up your other books but I generally prefer audiobooks - do you have any idea if those will get audiobooks versions at any point?
Thank you so much! Unfortunately, there are no audiobook versions of the Manifold Worlds duology, and I don't believe that's likely to change anytime soon.
AHHH thank you so much for the quick response! Now i can finish the last chapter in peace ❤️❤️❤️
I hope you enjoy it! <3
Hi there, I've been reading your books an accident of stars and now a tyranny of queens, which are labeled as books I and II of the manifold worlds, but I can't find anywhere if the series is finished or not?? I need to know if I should prepare myself for a cliffhanger ending to this one like in the first book - since there's no book III I can find 😱 I might finish before you even read this rip it's just so compelling I love them all sm,,,
I'm so glad you're enjoying them! The series is complete as a duology, so you don't need to worry about finding a third book :)
Your post about biology/terminology made me think of another space in which (understandable) defense against terfs is hobbling our language for talking about gender. "Socialized as male" is used so much to try and illegitimatize trans women that I'm worried using it can reinforce terf rhetoric. But I do think that the psychological impact from the way people are treated because of their *perceived* gender is worth discussing. I just don't know how we can do that without feeding transphobic narratives. (I'm agender and for me, gender is entirely about how other people act/react to external cues, but I don't want those discussions about it to hurt people for whom that's not true.)
(original post here for context)
this is definitely a topic which, I feel, could yield a whole lot of nuanced, interesting discussion if we were able to discuss it without pre-emptively tying ourselves in knots about the reactions of terfs. in any other context, the distinction between "I am X, but was treated like Y" would be considered a salient one, but with trans identity, we're fighting so hard for the "I am X part" to be acknowledged that there's not often space to discuss the "treated like Y" part beyond the - very relevant! but nonetheless simplistic - axis of "and it felt really bad."
the thing is, when a group of people is subject to the kind of threats and real violence that trans people currently are, it tends to make us... sensitive, let's say, to other trans narratives that could potentially be used to invalidate our own experiences. rationally, we know, there's no such thing as a universal trans experience beyond the fact of being trans, but when transphobes cite the testimony of a trans person who (for instance) regrets undergoing an aspect of medical transition personally to argue against providing medical transition broadly, we tend to consider the first trans person irresponsible for giving transphobes ammo, as though the problem is their personal trans experience and not the bigoted assholes looking to exploit it. as the saying goes, it's not paranoia if they're really out to get you, but paranoid readings of the lived experiences of others is not a great long-term strategy, and in the mean time, we can end up being angry at other trans people for having different lived experiences instead of at hostile interlocutors cherry-picking narratives to use out of context against the rest of us.
an aspect of trans discourse that’s really been itching me lately is the debate over referring to the sex you were assigned at birth - as distinct from your gender - as biologically male or female. specifically: the divide being drawn between (some) trans women, who reject the idea of being labelled biologically male, and (some) trans men, who do label themselves as biologically female. the argument I’ve seen made by trans women is that it’s irresponsible for trans men to label themselves biologically female, because this implies that trans women are likewise biologically male - and as being perceived male in any respect is a major source of the violence directed towards trans women, trans men who do this are putting their trans sisters at risk of harm.
which, unfortunately: we live in a world where this is a thing that happens. that threat of danger is very real. but I also think, at least within the trans community, we should acknowledge that this threat, which would not exist in the world we’re trying to build and which is a product of transphobia, should not be the yardstick we forever use to determine self-reference; that transphobes shouldn’t get to choose how we conceive of ourselves. trans women in particular are being forced to play a strong ideological defense on the matter for the sake of their safety, but this is not the same thing as the terminology itself being, for any trans person who chooses to embrace it, wrong.
we also need to acknowledge that, while the hypervisibility of trans women within public debates about transness frequently puts a bigger targets on their backs than it does trans men, trans men are still vulnerable to threats, abuse and danger; and, when passing, of being viewed as outsiders to “women’s” issues who have forfeited the right to speak on their experiences. this, too, creates a pressure to align with biological femaleness, to avoid being lumped in with cis men when it comes to speaking about things like sexual abuse and harassment, gender-based discrimination, menstruation, pregnancy, breast/chestfeeding and childbirth. again: the external pressure of cis assumptions and prejudices around trans folks’ bodies and personal experiences should not be the primary determining factor in who is “right” to self-define a certain way; it’s simply an undeniable thumb on the scale.
but precisely because of all this, I think we need to consider the extent to which this entire conversation is influenced by the idea that proximity to womanhood, to femaleness, is morally good and desirable, whereas proximity to masculinity, to maleness, is morally bad and undesirable: in other words, by terf shit. the idea that Gender Evils are stored in the penis, testosterone and/or the Y chromosome is why terfs believe that trans women are morally suspect predators and trans men gender traitors in the first place - and because the threat of real-world violence is real, a lot of us have rushed to try and counter this argument, not by refuting the claim that maleness is Bad at the biological level, but by professing ourselves inoculated against it: (some) trans women by refuting the nomenclature of biological sex, and (some) trans men by embracing it.
under the circumstances, I’m not faulting anyone for how they self-describe or for being afraid of backlash from how others identify. but I dislike the way in which trans and queer solidarity is being, for lack of a better word, subverted by terf anxieties about the supposed inherent (as opposed to culturally and socially conditioned) evils of maleness and masculinity, as though there can be no solidarity between trans men and trans women, or cis gay men and cis lesbians, or between any group of men and women, queer or otherwise. conceding ground about the inherent “danger” posed by “male” biology poisons the well of solidarity. to believe that men are inherently, bodily predisposed to badness, rather than being taught entitlement and bad behavior by patriarchal norms, is to deny the possibility of an equitable world; to accept the conservative defense so often made of misogynistic criminals that “boys will be boys” and “all men are like that”. if you do not believe that men can be better than what patriarchy so often makes of them, then you cannot truly believe that the long term goals of feminism and queer liberation are achievable, which is the very same corner that terfs have argued themselves into in pursuit of denying trans women in particular their humanity.
so! some things to think about!
A quite insightful quote from Stormy Daniels.
[Text ID: We are thought of as less than people. When every story about me broke, it was “porn star Stormy Daniels, real name X,” and they printed my real name everywhere. Every time you see Whoopi Goldberg’s name, or Nicolas Cage or Bruno Mars, they don’t put their real name in parentheses behind it. I had so many female journalists do it to me. And when I said something to them, [they’d say,] “Say her name. Say her name. Her name is Stephanie Clifford, say it! She’s not just porn star Stormy Daniels!” But they never paused to think that maybe that’s the name I wanted. And you just outed my family. I guarantee you wouldn’t misgender me, so why would you use a dead name? And they thought they were doing the right thing because they’re on their big high feminist fucking #MeToo horse and they never even stopped to do the most basic feminist thing, which is ask the woman in the center of the storm what she wants to be called. And nobody did it. /End ID]
Fun fact! When I was googling to find this citation to make it easier to add the text id, google auto-completed "Stormy Daniels" to "Stormy Daniels real name" with her full legal name in giant letters right below the question!
There's also this very insightful bit from her right before the above passage:
"One of the things I want to do, because of what happened to me in court, is to use [my] platform to lobby to change the rule about being able to discriminate against sex workers. Because as a director, all these years in the business, I saw so many girls come in and not want to be stars. They just wanted to make money to go to school, and they didn’t buy purses, they didn’t do drugs, they didn’t party, they didn’t do anything fucking stupid, right? I really got to know these women on a personal level because I was directing at least once a month for 10 years. And so I saw these girls come in, do everything right, get a degree in nursing, leave the business—but then a year or two years later, they’d come back because they got fired over and over and over because they got recognized at work.
And when they came back, that’s when they were broken. That’s when they did drugs. That’s when they died. That’s when I saw them commit suicide, not the first time around. I can name 50 girls right now who have gotten fired because they used to do porn. And that’s got to change and [the rape shield carve-out] has to change. And what they did to me has to change. Because it’s bullshit. You don’t want us to do porn, but you won’t let us do anything else."
ALOK VAID-MENON Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness 1x03 (2022)
Alok’s book report of The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century by Dr. Kyla Schuller
this is a targeted and personal attack
