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"amab" and "afab" are not euphemisms for "male" and "female." not even a doctor should be using "afab" as shorthand for "has a vulva, uterus, high estrogen levels, low testosterone levels, etc," because HRT EXISTS! gender affirming surgeries exist! intersex people exist! you can be afab and change, remove, or not even have been born with any of the above features!!

you cannot use "amab" and "afab" as a shorthand for "has this or that set of features!"

it's not about using progressive language, it's about accurately accounting for people who exist outside the sex binary. those of us who do are under-studied, and the medical system is poorly equipped to handle us, often lumping us in with our agabs and failing to account for how our bodies actually work. this is a PROBLEM that cannot be papered over by finding new euphemisms for "male" and "female"

We had a web system where people were basically automatically triaged for certain conditions and when I was hired there was a question for UTI symptoms that asked are you a man or a woman, routing women to same-day nurse practitioner appointments (because they usually had uncomplicated UTIs) and men to physicians (because they usually had STIs, and if they DID have UTIs they were more medically complex) but this meant that trans people were getting sorted wrong. A committee of me, a doctor, one or two nurses, and another administrator sat down and talked through what that sorting logic actually needed to do, what the risks were of sorting wrong, and what language would be acceptable.

We did not need to know their gender, their sex assigned at birth, their transition history, any of that. What we needed to know is how long their urethra is, because a short urethra means the likeliest situation is an uncomplicated UTI where the top priority is getting antibiotics into them as fast as possible to prevent kidney involvement, and a long urethra means the likeliest situation (in our clinical population) is an STI, but if it IS a UTI kidney involvement may already be a factor, so either way they need a doctor. The language we came up with was "do you have a penis?"

Instead of seeing the house as clean/not clean, it helps a lot to see cleaning as a constant upkeep of your environment. Taking care of your home, and of yourself, is a good thing!

you’re done when you feel done, or you’re too bored to live, or it’s bedtime, or any number of other markers, you get to pick. (emphasis mine)

have you ever seen a junebug get to grips with a window screen? it’s remarkably persistent, but not very focused. all that matters is location.

how to junebug: choose the location you feel you can probably get some shit done on today. be specific. not ‘the bathroom’ but ‘the bathroom sink’. you are not choosing a range, you are choosing a center; you will move around, but your location is where you’ll keep coming back to. mentally stick a pin in it. consider yourself tethered to that spot by a long mental bungee cord.

go to your location. look at stuff. move stuff around. do a thing. get distracted. remember you’re junebugging the bathroom sink and go back there. look at it some more. do a different thing. get distracted. get a sandwich. remember you’re junebugging and go back to the bathroom sink.

nt’s will go crazy watching you, and if they demand to know When You Will Be Done you will probably have to roll them in a carpet and stuff them up the chimney. you’re done when you feel done, or you’re too bored to live, or it’s bedtime, or any number of other markers, you get to pick. but the thing is, by returning repeatedly to that one spot, you harness the ‘hyperactivity’ part instead of wasting all that energy battling with the ‘attention deficit’ part.

not only will the bathroom sink almost certainly be clean, and probably the mirror and soap dish too, you might’ve swapped in a fresh toothbrush, a new soap, you might’ve unclogged the drain – you will probably also have cleaned or fixed up several things in the near vicinity, or in the path between the sink and where you get the fresh toothbrush, or maybe you did your grocery shopping cuz you were out of soap, or maybe you couldn’t find a clean hand towel and ended up doing laundry.

this is good. you got shit done! it wasn’t necessarily Cleaned The Bathroom in the way nt’s think of it, but screw ‘em. things are better than they were.

But also, and this is really important to keep in mind regarding bigotry that still causes in many ways larger problems, that the structural problems are not actually fixed.

If you go to any computer lab or public library, the mice will be on the right side of the computer. Sometimes they can be moved. Sometimes they can't. Many computer mice are curved to only fit in right hands.

It is impossible to find lefthanded scissors without going to a specialty store, because most scissor makers don't even make them. And it's not just a matter of grip; the slicing side of the blades is obscured if you use righty scissors in your left hand, so your cut is off.

All those signing pads with the little chained styluses? Almost always on the right side, often not even long enough to stretch to the left. Makes signing for lefties extremely difficult.

I caused actual muscular problems in college having to twist around in order to write at right-handed desks in college when there weren't enough lefty desks--and there never were. Some classrooms didn't even have a single one.

I could go on.

Pause for a moment, especially if you’re right-handed—and I’m being serious here, physically do this if you have two functioning arms and hands—and grab a writing tool in your left hand. Now place your right index finger down and try to start writing a word next to it.

Yeah. Great technique, huh? Really convenient and comfortable and easy. 🙃

I sent in a small baggie of small popsicle sticks I’d custom painted for them and labeled with their name for kiddo to use instead, but ultimately they stopped because it wasn’t as convenient when nobody else had to get something out.

Writing in English is difficult enough when you’re left-handed (most of our letters are designed with pull motions, but lefties must push), but even other foundational basics are made more difficult than they have to be, because their needs aren’t considered, even in situations where overt hostility isn’t intended.

Even now, in an older grade, they’re now all sharing a lot of the supplies, but my kiddo has their own pair of labeled lefty scissors they keep in their personal cubby. Teacher was 100% chill with me sending them in, but didn’t even consider to take the step further when I’d asked about whether or not they had them to just… get some for all the lefties. I know there are other kids, know some of them personally. (I made a set of writing spacing sticks for the single one that I knew of back in 1st grade.)

Regarding computer mice? Kiddo had standardized testing last year. They do it on chromebooks now at their school. They did their entire first day with the track pad instead of the mouse, because none of the teachers proctoring or assisting even knew you COULD switch the sides/toggle a setting to switch which button was the dominant select. We happened to have one at home thanks to remote learning during Covid’s early days, so that night we sat down together and found the setting ourselves so they could fix it the following day. But on a student account at school, they couldn’t change that setting. And? None of those teachers knew enough about technology to be able to override it. So even when I went above and beyond and personally sought out the skills and tools to help my child level the playing field on their own, the teaching staff was so unaccustomed to even considering this as a need or problem, that they weren’t able to remove the incredibly basic barriers to a fair schooling experience.