"The Angst Monarch"

in grad school one time I had a conversation with a professor during office hours that ended up with me confessing I was afraid with the rising homophobia and transphobia in the country. she said that I could always just go back in the closet and I wouldn't be a target.

In a huge way that's what even the current (a year after OP's post, this being the second time the Lefebrvists are being excommunicated) kerfluffle - and all "mad about Vatican II and the Church having the audacity to be more focused on proving that it serves the poor and the vulnerable than proving that it can tell people how they're allowed to have sex and that they're not holy unless they are also Catholic" piss-fits from so-called tradcaths - is about: in the middle of the twentieth century, and in some cases even solidly previous back into the nineteenth century, very powerful people in the establishment started heavy duty realizing that they were losing the laity at an alarming rate. And they realized that they were not losing them to Protestantism (which had also started losing people, in a large scale way) but that people were literally going " . . . maybe I just . . . don't want this church thing in my life" and often the tagline was "because frankly it makes me miserable, and sucks, and is hypocritical as everloving shit, and is just a lot of work really."

And you can shake your fist at that all you like on a purely moral angle (people should care more about the state of their soul than - !) but the Church did not survive the 1800+ years of violence and upheaval and threats from secular powers that actually did march right up to the gates with an army that felt ABSOLUTELY FINE about killing everyone inside . . . it did not get through all of these by ignoring the pragmatic realities. The schismatics will try to give you the impression that eg Vatican II reforms were the pet project of specific popes but almost 3000 bishops spent a number of years hashing them out and they were quite literally voted on by the assembly of bishops and at no point did any one of the reforms get less than over a two-thirds majority (the one that was the least amount over was actually the first vote on a thing about how to use broadcast media).

And the special status of Vatican City in the world is not something that was coincidentally bestowed or just Happened to the Roman Catholic Church. The historical struggles over control of the physical city of Rome, and the land surrounding it, and then post-Unification - like this was fought over and the key, core, most important part of it was at heart ensuring that the bishop of Rome - the Pope - did not actually answer to the laws of a secular power in terms of trying to do his job as pope. At certain points in history this de-facto wobbled as one secular power or another invaded Rome with "forcing the Church to do what I want" in mind, and the other side of the wobble was some OTHER secular power going HEY THAT'S OUT OF BOUNDS and people died over it; and then the point of the papal states was to go ok you can't do that anymore because we actually own a country around us, and then the people unifying Italy were like no we require Rome for lo what is Italy without Rome and there was a huge fucking fight about what to do about that before the Lateran treaties validated this weird little city-state we now have inside Italy and Rome called "Vatican City".

But this is because the Roman Catholic Church wants to survive, and wants to survive as what it can recognize as itself, and not answer to any king or president or anything else in terms of where its supreme pontiff Actually Lives.

cis women's fight is part of our larger fight, but too many do not want to make these connections. a cis woman will fight for the right to abortion, hormonal birth control, labor protections against discrimination for pregnancy, etc. as entirely disconnected struggles from access to other gendered surgeries, hormonal treatments, and labor protections against gendered discrimination. but they are not disconnected.

this perceived separation between these struggles is only in one direction. for example, the disparity between the percent of trans people who openly defend the right of cis girls accessing abortion at any age without needing parental consent (almost all of us) and the percent of cis women who defend the right of trans kids accessing transition care at any age without needing parental consent is stark. and that is very depressing to me.

whenever I draw obvious parallels, I get notes from cis women telling me how disgusting it is to compare our healthcare to theirs. they tell me in a variety of ways that their politically controversial gendered healthcare needs are obviously legitimate, unlike ours.

but all of our healthcare is getting criminalized and dismantled. you talk to a reactionary and they do not believe your healthcare is a legitimate need either. they also say cis women who get abortions are selfish, sex-obsessed, and a danger to children. this is the same fight and too many cis women refuse to acknowledge it.

whenever I see posts talking about defending pregnant women (not people, but women) the notes are full of transphobic cis women. I saw one the other day where a USian in the notes was saying "this is why women become republicans, because at least the right respects pregnant women." do they? how is that alliance going?

I want cis women to understand that the struggle for bodily autonomy over sexed characteristics is one struggle. insisting on this rhetorical distinction between us is a reactionary move. it calls people with regressive gender politics to your side even if you do not intend for that to happen. it reproduces the conditions that are currently stripping you of your rights, too.

this is what I mean about how right now in the united states (won't speak for elsewhere but feel free to lmk in the notes if you'd like) a lot of us trans adults who are able to access transition care can only do so at the direct expense of trans minors. this clinic would not have opened if they held the line and offered equal access to healthcare to trans minors.

"Martin announced the direct-care clinic, calling it “one of the first times a public health department has ever taken that step.” But when Cabán pushed back, pointing out that trans youth are the ones most under attack right now—noting that there are “almost no providers” left for youth the entire city—Martin indicated the clinic would not serve youth, citing the need to “strike a balance” between providing care and avoiding “clawbacks from the federal government.” This morning, EITM can directly confirm that the age cutoff is 19—matching the Trump administration’s executive order threshold, not the standard legal age of adulthood in New York."

a lot of the structural transphobia we are experiencing is hitting minors even worse. their care gets banned first. if you want a preview of what access to healthcare will look like for us trans adults in 2 years, look at what access looks like for legal minors right now.

this is what I mean about how right now in the united states (won't speak for elsewhere but feel free to lmk in the notes if you'd like) a lot of us trans adults who are able to access transition care can only do so at the direct expense of trans minors. this clinic would not have opened if they held the line and offered equal access to healthcare to trans minors.

"Martin announced the direct-care clinic, calling it “one of the first times a public health department has ever taken that step.” But when Cabán pushed back, pointing out that trans youth are the ones most under attack right now—noting that there are “almost no providers” left for youth the entire city—Martin indicated the clinic would not serve youth, citing the need to “strike a balance” between providing care and avoiding “clawbacks from the federal government.” This morning, EITM can directly confirm that the age cutoff is 19—matching the Trump administration’s executive order threshold, not the standard legal age of adulthood in New York."

a lot of the structural transphobia we are experiencing is hitting minors even worse. their care gets banned first. if you want a preview of what access to healthcare will look like for us trans adults in 2 years, look at what access looks like for legal minors right now.

(they can't describe how with any specifics. they usually do not know surgeries are often multiple-stages with multiple procedures involved, and certainly not the names for these procedures. there is never any consideration given that "difference" might be desirable or actively pursued by some, or that anyone wants an end result that does not involve pericis normative genitals at all).

that is what people have unconsciously absorbed culturally before they ever look into it themselves. all information about these surgeries has to first pass the barrier of "but I've heard it's not very good."

there is also a very common prejudice that trans people are manipulative, hiding bodily information, and trying to "lure" people into transness.

when this baseline "common sense" about bottom surgery (that it is bad) is conflicted by information from a trans person (who by default is imagined to be manipulative, hiding information about it, and trying to lure you), people's initial reaction is to assume the trans person is lying and attempting to coerce people into surgery.

it creates this paradoxical position where no one who has actually had these surgeries are taken seriously, and only people who have the least accurate medical information about trans people's bodies are trusted to speak about them. the less you know about healthcare, the more "objective" your descriptions.