Cat over moon

One bot I do like is haiku bot. Very nice little guy.

Bot could just reblog without

reading a haiku.

"The 'God Made Trans People' billboard is stupid! God didn't make me! I'm an atheist!" Okay. The billboard sits along a major highway in Kansas. We can deduce that the target audience is not you—it's the centrist evangelical Christians driving along that road who could probably be persuaded to become allies as long as we choose our words carefully and don't make them feel attacked for not already knowing everything about trans rights issues. Another one I see a lot is, "We shouldn't be talking about how right-wing legislation catches [privileged in-group] in the crossfire when [marginalized out-group] suffers far more!" I know. I agree with you. Which is why you and I are not the intended audience of this argument!

The entire point of rhetoric is to win over someone who doesn't already fully agree with you. In this case, let's say that someone is Jennifer, the moderate center-right mom in your neighborhood who doesn't really know or care about transgender issues but would be absolutely horrified by the idea of her teenage daughter having to submit to an invasive inspection of her body just to be allowed to play soccer. Tell her, "Banning trans students from sports will inevitably subject all student athletes to invasive gender-policing," or "Legal restrictions on gender-affirming care will make it harder for you to access the hormone replacement therapy you take to treat menopause symptoms," and she is more likely to question her existing beliefs and listen to the rest of what you have to say than if you lead with leftist talking points that she already has a calcified opinion about or which she thinks do not personally affect her.

"You cannot transition to being intersex as it is a congenital sex status that describes the way the body naturally develops. Inferring that someone can become/transition to being intersex is harmful because also implies that the reverse is true, and that those of us subjected to Intersex Genital Mutilation, medical abuse, and harm are no longer intersex. It implies that we can be "corrected" to perisex and that we can be erased. People who have neutral, nonbinary, or mixed sex transition goals/acquired anatomy can use "Altersex" instead of appropriating the intersex label."

this is the most concise explanation, but here's more:

"It is a common misconception to confuse intersex and trans experiences. We share some, but being intersex doesn't make you trans. Same as being trans does not make you intersex. However it is very much possible to have an intersex condition and be trans at the same time. For some of us this is a very painful reality when the individual got altered as an infant without consent only to realize later in life to re-alter what got forced upon them."

And as far as the "say you're intersex to avoid transphobia" thing goes:

"Not only is it inappropriate to pretend to be part of a minority group you have to be born into but it also harms us as you will misrepresent our experience, struggles, etc. and this contributes to our erasure. It is offensive and ignorant of our realities.

even if it sucks, even if they're saying things you want to refute, even if you think refuting will help things because Everyone Will Understand if You Just Speak Clearly Enough. even if you want to vent publicly because you think you deserve that much, acknowledging them is almost always the wrong move. you're just pouring gas and making sure that those couple little sparks turn into a fire. and all of them love to see you upset, not just the nazis threatening rape. sucks when it's your own, but hey, hurt people hurt people!

engaging is bad for a few different reasons. the first is that these people feed on attention. reply publicly, and that will give someone enough juice to make a new account every few days for a year plus, sending you paragraphs of insults mixed with strange accusations. whereas if you'd ignored them, maybe that obsessive phase would've only lasted a couple weeks. genuinely, you can create your own stalkers by reacting.

the second is that by engaging publicly, you're platforming them. even if you just post literal puppies and rainbows, there will be people hate-following who are pissed off about how many notes your latest puppies and rainbows photo got (because if you got more notes than them, it's punching up). they will see you engaging with harassment and go, hey, I can do that too! and that's how you get harasser mitosis.

platforming also has another problem. most people are good, but by the sheer quantity of people you'll be exposed to online, some will be malicious. if you are refuting something incorrect ("I never killed that man because I wasn't even in Florida on that day!") they will go right to the original slander ("they killed that man in Florida"), copy/paste, and spread it. or they will forgo the copy/pasting and just let it mutate in their memory so that it's a whole new thing by the time they spread it ("they killed several men and women in Florida, and also California").

currently, I'm in the 'block everyone who could potentially hate-follow and harass me' phase, but there is also some danger to that, because people see blocking as you acknowledging them, which (depending on the person) might be enough gasoline to rev them up. but it does at least provide some barrier, because making new accounts to block evade takes a modicum of energy, and if they're continually starved of further interactions, that energy will eventually fade.

*To clarify, I am talking about interpersonal experiences where someone has been directly misogynistic to you, not to systemic/institutional misogyny enacted on a broad scale by those in power.

Due to the limitations of polls I can only include so many options so unfortunately I did have to group some identities together, please just choose the option that best fits or choose nuance and elaborate as you see fit.

And on the one hand I feel really bad for them, because they were clearly really upset and they kept apologizing even though it wasn't really their fault. (Who the fuck puts metal posts underneath a rotating solar panel?!)

perhaps more than a little

bit… Titillated.)

But when one of the women needed help packing a large house worth of boxes into a big moving truck, the other was there with the rest of us, moving boxes. Because that's what you did. Personal dislike and rivalry were trumped by the social obligations of being part of the community. Mutual aid trumped mutual hatred.

Now, I have no desire to go back to the cult, but I do think they were on to something here. Community can't be about who we are friends with or get along with easily. If you won't go to bat for people you hate then this is not a community, it's a popularity contest.