Yein Ved Dahral

It's unhinged to assume that someone's taste in fiction equates to what they believe is moral or good, or is something they want to see or experience in real life.

That is a bonkers assumption to make.

I'm tired of humoring people with long arguments about it when the simple fact is it is a totally fucking absurd reach to accuse someone who enjoys something in fiction of being in favor of it in real life.

The kid was picked up by an ambulance 30 minutes later.

Now as an adult working in security I get SO MANY folks- upper-middle aged mostly- coming to me to 'rat out' people they think are faking it.

I was once sent into a bathroom because a client demanded that the "fucker won't get out, so go drag them out"- I was NEVER going to do that, so I did a wellness check instead. You know who it was? A person recently released from the hospital after a car accident. They had a hole in their skull and major hearing loss. They couldn't answer the owner because they couldn't HEAR the owner.

Another time about a homeless man who got around town by kicking the ground from his wheelchair. "You know he doesn't actually need that thing, his legs work fine, it's just for pity points"- Oh, so he's not paralyzed, his wheelchair is performative? Funny story Dale, I actually know that guy, he was backed over by a truck and has chronic pain from his shattered pelvis. But sure, let's make him stand up and walk everywhere so nobody feels too bad for him and tries to help him or something.

"She doesn't need that scooter, I've seen her get out of it."

"Look how fat he is, because he just rides around and refuses to get up."

"She doesn't really need that cane- she comes here without it all the time"

Well who is it meant for, then? The cross-dressers? The kinksters? The ones who don't pass? The sex workers? The "ugly" ones?

Maybe it's for the rude ones, or the "loud" ones, or the ones who never came "out", past their middle-aged years and slipping on nice stockings under their khaki trousers, putting on a bit of blush in the bathroom mirror and then quickly washing it off again before anyone can see?

Maybe it's for the "traps", the beautiful ones who keep it secret and don't tell you until after the third date, when you can stab them to death for the crime of being human and plead "Gay Panic" at the trial to get off scot-free?

If we're going to call people "tranny", but not the ones like me, then who exactly are you thinking of?

I'd probably have called her my best friend at the time, though I very much doubt she'd have said the same, partly because having One Single Best Friend and being super weird about which of your friends gets this coveted spot is not something middle-aged people care about.

This concept that it is still "weird" even if it isn't predatory is cutting kids off from community and from the concept of safe adults. And I think it's really really important to have that outside of spaces where people can legally control you.