So for me personally as a trans man, i would basically give anything to be seen as male the same way that cis men are. I’m even in favor of a radical reinterpretation of the current concept of the sex binary in a way which would classify trans men/women as male/female sex respectively even though i know that idea has problems itself.

Anyhow, I feel that basically I am coercively pressured to identify as “female” when engaging with the medical system in order to receive healthcare, like by unfairly sacrificing a portion of my autonomy I can maintain access to necessary treatments. It’s been ongoing for so long that I feel sometimes in broader medical discussion I reflexively reduce myself to being “female” due to this, because everyone expects certain organs to be called certain names and to be classified as belonging to a particular sex, and I absolutely despise it.

I don’t particularly have a question tied to this, I just wanted to share my thoughts and perhaps hear yours in return

The ask being referenced.

As requested, here are my thoughts: making access to certain aspects of healthcare conditional upon some sex/gender/identity association is always going to create problems for a portion of the population.

this is an interesting lens to analyze the production and distribution of video games and culture, especially with regard to the USA's language imperialism. but it is not special.

the reason it's "special" is because Toby Fox enjoys a reputation among "leftist" gamers and fandom that other gamedevs who are much more openly rancid U.S. right-wingers (like FNAF Guy) don't.

everyone feels like they are on friendly terms with Toby Fox (once you notice we call him "Toby", i.e. first-name basis, you can't unsee it) because he's creative, progressive, polite, funny and successful. but this is not a reason to trust/expect him to be politically conscious.

now, it's true that this also reveals a lot about fandom racism and people's ability to polarize themselves, often joining the side of the property-owning U.S. millionaire to "defend" him from the global south.

but on the other hand, the people who side "against" his translation decisions are either clearly elated to have a reason to hate on this beloved cinnamon roll (because he's too progressive or not enough). and importantly, to have a reason to indulge petty liberal discourse about individual product consumption/production choices. some of that discourse is openly racist and reactionary, but some is painted under the colors of anti-imperialism and anti-racism.

notably though, i think people with solid anti-imperialist politics made the mistake of extending them into a moral framework here, as if it's the U.S. American bourgeois artist's responsibility to make his (quality)slop available to the global south. this is not a very coherent position. in fact it would be less appealing, but equally coherent to argue we should prevent U.S. games and culture from dominating the world further, and the language barrier must remain to prevent this!

in the end it's nice to be able to participate in the dominant U.S. culture and consume their exports, yes. but that should be a personal struggle. to integrate this into the class struggle is to slip on the banana peel of assimilationism! (of course, blanket rejection of all U.S. cultural production would be a form of reaction, and a mistake as well.)

i think it's evident that Toby Fox's real position is "well i don't wanna! and you can't force me to make art the way you want!", which is his only coherent and defensible position. but he can't say that openly, he's a non-confrontational guy, he wants to be loved and forgiven by his fans in Latin America. so instead he makes mediocre factual claims about game translation and development, which (true or false) just so happen to align with the status quo of culture and language imperialism.

cue, of course, the sound of someone stepping on a rake.

so what now? (this leads to my main point and only real political position on this matter, which i mentioned in a previous post.)

we can argue about the artist's right to create how he wants or the consumer's right to have culture accessible to them, but in any case Toby Fox cannot choose without betraying either his values about "artistic integrity" or his values about "being niceys to fans".

the thing is, these are not opposite values. they are only in conflict for a very specific reason: because people who aren't Toby Fox are barred from making his cultural production accessible. because he reserves that right for himself, and no one else, in the first place. i am of course talking about a legal barrier and a legal right, made into tangible forces because they're backed by cops, lawyers, state violence: copyright law.

Toby Fox finds the responsibility of translating his games unbearable and crushing, but he will not relinquish his exclusive right to do so. he will not relinquish his power to destroy fan translators with a lawsuit the moment he stops feeling Niceys. say, for example... because they've started seeking a fair wage for this unpaid labor. getting paid for real work performed to transform his intellectual property.

the real issue at play is that fan translations are uncompensated work, and this work can never be fairly funded or compensated because of copyright. the fundamental inequality is the implicit threat of a C&D and lawsuit hanging over the head of anyone who might attempt this.

it took Toby a long time to rein in Materia Collective after they proved ruthlessly overprotective of his intellectual property. no one wants to try and see whether Toby could pull the equivalent of Nintendo condemning Gary Bowser to debt slavery for life. he certainly has the wealth and goodwill to get away with it, if he doesn't feel merciful.

he could change this and make it safe, for example by releasing Undertale/Deltarune's dialogue files under CC-BY-SA. but he won't. with that decision he has, knowingly or not, followed in the footsteps of every bourgeois artist before him, and manufactured this entire nonsense moral quandary and the various rakes he keeps stepping on!

this is the lesson we should be drawing from this situation, all in all. your artistic integrity, making your work accessible to fans, your class interests as a bourgeois millionaire: you can pick two and only two.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

A lot of stuff that's considered canon in star wars is actually kind of ascended fanon. Like, if you really dig into it, it's remarkable how much of the lightsaber-juggling, movie-retreading atmosphere of pop culture/the expanded universe Lucas incorporated into the prequel trilogy, likely without realising.

Example: Strictly according to the original trilogy, does Master Yoda possess a lightsaber? I would say no. It is significant that in a film, where every shot is deliberately planned, we never see a lightsaber in relation to Yoda, and the one time he acknowledges Luke's it is dismissively; "Your weapons, you will not need them." By implication, Yoda is a Buddha to Obi-Wan's warrior monk. Yoda is a teacher and a mystic, but he is not a warrior.

Force lightning is another of these things. You go back to the original trilogy, and there's a sense that the Force and what you can do with it is very personalised. Nobody but Palpatine throws lightning, not even his apprentice, and in turn nobody but Vader chokes people to death. Luke does learn the mind trick introduced by Obi-Wan, but that's part and parcel with Luke's growth into a compassionate warrior-philosopher who tries to solve conflicts nonviolently. Force Choke is not 'a dark side force power', it is Vader's power, a manifestation of his crushing authority and smothering presence.

Likewise, Force Lightning is not 'a dark side power', and it is not generic lightning. It is the Emperor's power, characteristic of his cruelty, his sadistic delight in corrupting and hurting other people. We can see this in how it is used. Force Lightning does not split steel or blast people off their feet or blow things up, like a real bolt of lightning - it transfixes Luke in agony, sends him reeling to the floor with torturous pain until he screams for his father's help.

hbomberguy and co are over on bluesky pedojacketing patricia taxxon because she called him out for underpaying her as a freelancer for several years (including when she was a fucking teenager)

limelight