frog 🐸

Only freedom for other people. They love their own freedom.

Same here. Section 28 came into effect just before I started school, and wasn’t repealed until after I had left, and I’m certain the lack of proper, unbiased sex education contributed to me not knowing I was trans until my mid 30s.

Further proof that all the Tories know how to do is re-enact the 1980s. Vote 'em out at the next election. StopTheTories.vote and BestForBritain.org will both be providing localised information on which candidate is best placed to evict your neighbourhood Tory MP, as it’s not a given that Labour are the best choice in every constituency. And make sure you have some form of ID, as you need these to vote now.

“Dragon of Ash and Stars” by H. Leighton Dickson is definitely worth a read.

Broadly the same treatments that are currently available to adults: none. I passed the four year anniversary of being on the waiting list for the adult clinic about 6 weeks ago, and I still haven’t heard anything from them.

One of the greatest sources of fear - and thus hate - is ignorance. Generalised information about what gender-affirming care for younger people entails doesn’t violate any individual patient’s right to privacy, but it does help to clear up the disinformation. Those who don’t know what trans healthcare actually looks like will fill in the details with all kinds of imagined fears, and will make demands for legislation based on things that aren’t really happening.

I think more flag designs are a good thing. It’s not like this bi-inclusive flag means it’s now illegal to fly the previous version of the progress flag, or an identity-specific flag. Everybody can just pick a flag that resonates with them and allows them to express themselves.

I would play this campaign.

I’m not completely convinced that Keir Starmer genuinely holds transphobic beliefs. His anger at Sunak’s mocking of trans people when Brianna Ghey’s mother was in the Commons gallery was not faked. He was literally shaking with rage, and not for his own sake, but for hers. I’ve been following PMQs for a couple of years now, don’t think I’ve ever seen him get that angry before. So there’s that.

My suspicion is he’s saying what he thinks he needs to say in order to get elected, which… is a strategy. Not one that is particularly inspiring or admirable. One that comes with the very real risk of leading to LGBTQ and young voters staying home or voting Green or Lib Dem in protest. When I see reporting of Starmer making comments like this, it’s always when he’s talking to the Torygraph or Daily Heil, which says to me he’s playing to his audience.

Still sucks, though. Knowing why he’s doing it doesn’t make it any less repulsive and hurtful. Still leaves me with a very real temptation to vote for some other party just out of spite, even though it would ultimately be self-defeating because then we’d be stuck with the Tories, who are definitely worse. It’s kind of depressing that there’s an awful lot of politicians that need to be punished at the ballot box, and we lack viable options to make both Labour and the Tories hurt.

Yep. I do reckon there’s a percentage of transphobes who are imagining hordes of men pretending to be women to get into women’s spaces, but genuinely do have no problem with actual trans people (even in women’s spaces. Even as a trans person, I think the belief that, for example, the small number of convicted rapists claiming a trans identity need to be far more closely scrutinised than someone with no history of acting in bad faith, is reasonable.) Now that Rowling is saying the quiet parts out loud, she becomes repulsive to that particular group.

It’s definitely my dream to one day find a campaign where I can play a character like this.

Rowling overplayed her hand recently, I think. There’s a podcast I listen to every day, whose host I enjoy a lot, and most of his regular guests I like as well. One of them I’m not a fan of because she’s pretty transphobic… until Rowling attacked India Willoughby. That, it seems, was a step too far, because this previously rather transphobic lady was like “hang on a second, India Willoughby is a woman though”, and has settled into a new position of “there’s conversations that need to be had about prisons and sports, but otherwise trans people are not a threat and we need to be more tolerant”. This is someone who has, on occasions, induced such rage in me that I ended up yelling at the podcast, and her change of tack caught me completely by surprise. When Rowling has started frothing at the mouth so much that even other transphobes are rethinking their views, things feel a little less hopeless.

Personally I am increasingly uncomfortable feeling the “need” to apologize to regressive people about feeling hurt or insulted. They are entirely responsible for their actions.

The “I’m so sorry your feelings are hurt” non-apology is always an option. It sounds like an apology, but it basically means “I’m sorry you suck” rather than apologising for doing something wrong. In most contexts, it’s an asshole thing to do because it’s a refusal to acknowledge that someone has a good reason to be hurt. When dealing with bigots, “I’m sorry you suck” is perhaps the most appropriate response.

Dangerous Kids Online Safety Act

It’s surely a sign that I’m much too tired, but initially I read this as the name of the act, and it made me go “what are they trying to stop dangerous kids doing online?” After rereading it, the actual meaning of the title became clear. But as the recent murder of Brianna Ghey shows, dangerous kids being online is a problem that needs to be addressed at some point.

Yep, definitely agree with you there!

Thanks for the heads up. Now I won’t read it.

It would be so much nicer to see an article about, say, a mens’ football team that is happy to support their trans guy team mates.

It’s not good comedy when the people you’re making fun of aren’t laughing too.

This is where I draw the line between comedians like Dave Chappelle and, say, Jimmy Carr. It’s fair to say Jimmy Carr isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, because his jokes can be really dark and really offensive - but he pokes fun at everybody, not just one specific group, and he can take it when someone pokes back.

When a comedian makes fun of everybody, and sees the humour when others make fun of them, it gives the sense there’s no real hatred or malice there, and that makes it better comedy than when the jokes come from a place of real bigotry.

It’s always helpful to remember that it’s not how someone treats their equals that tells you who they are. It’s how they treat those who are weaker than them. Bragging about how he loves punching down is like bragging about being a bully: Chappelle might think it makes him look cool, but it simply makes him look pathetic.

This is my guess as well. And I think for female transphobes, a big part of it is internalised misogyny. On some level, they hate women, but can’t admit it because they are a woman, so they hate trans women (who they see as choosing to be women) and they hate trans men (who they see as also hating women and choosing not to be one). The reason I think this is an awful lot of female transphobes also seem to spend a lot of time judging other women for a lot of things: being too poor, too black, having too many children, not enough children, having too many partners, not enough partners, being a sex worker, having too high-powered a career, being insufficiently ambitious/aspirational. The only common factor appears to be hating all women who aren’t them.

With hindsight, what I think looks the worst, is learning that she would C&D anyone for not interpreting them “the right way”. That’s low.

Yep! Especially since most of the people she was threatening were kids. I know there was at least one person, slightly older, who fought it and the matter went to court. I’ve always wondered what the judge thought, having to make a decision regarding an old lady suing a 20-something woman over fictional dragons being depicted in the “wrong” way. The fan won the case, probably because the whole thing was ridiculous.