Sold My Soul For Rock N' Roll

Sinners studies in heavypaint

and uh. Fucking yikes? (pre-emptive apologies to Velvet, I saw this post before going to sleep and got so angry it derailed my entire night).

The real antagonism concealed within the movement for transgender rights since the 1990s is class-based. The material struggle to transition has given way to the concerns of a small transgender professional class who have popularized their own interests and values as if they were universally emancipatory: self-actualization, cosmopolitanism in style and language, and personal declarations of being above or beyond the gender binary. Far from radical, let alone critical of liberalism, these values are conventionally American, deeply rooted in the culture of consumerist individualism. Since the early 1970s, stagnating wages, rising income inequality, the dismantling of the New Deal welfare state, and the ravages of deindustrialization have spurred the dramatic growth of personality expression, therapeutic culture, and the private individual as a sacred refuge from a crumbling public. The transgender iteration of this political culture, which I’ve termed “transgender liberalism,” has over those decades erased the interests and worldview of working-class people. For most people, transition raises an immediate economic problem, rather than psychological or aesthetic questions; it triggers economic insecurity and downward mobility, and it takes significant private wealth to cushion the blow. The cost of medical care, finding and keeping a job in a gendered labor market, and the frequent loss of family support or other inherited resources combine to make changing sex both expensive and risky. The transgender position was, historically, invented by people who deliberately declined to transition so that they could conserve their jobs, marriages, private wealth, and social status. In the 1990s, there was a pointed political confrontation between middle-class transgender politics and working-class transsexual politics. The strongest materialist critiques were often tendered by transsexual women who understood transition’s downward mobility, like scholar Viviane K. Namaste, whose 2000 book Invisible Lives offers a bracing account of the conflict. Though they were unpopular for it, transsexual women denounced transgender’s flight into the elitist idealism of college-educated radicalism. Transgender partisans, meanwhile, elevated a deliberate incongruence between physical sex and gendered personality as more sophisticated than transitioning from one sex to another and living unmolested for it. Over time, the position has stretched into several of the core transgender claims that conservative justices took advantage of in Skrmetti: that one need not experience dysphoria or even try to change sex to be transgender; that transgender identity involves endless and shifting personal identification, making it impossible to define; or that everyone might be, in fact, a bit transgender because anyone can adopt an androgynous style or challenge stereotypes about women and men.

... like, what the fuck.

And then she goes on to say this:

Skrmetti has made painfully clear two things I have long argued, albeit for very different reasons: First, that the legal protection of transition cannot successfully be derived from medical expertise. Nor can it derive from the political invention of “transgender status,” which is vulnerable to judicial critique not just from conservatives but for its flagrant class antagonisms. Instead of clinging to a losing strategy, we must find the courage to engage the law on its own terms. We should not keep pressing for liberal transgender rights; we should wield the historical foundation of what Andrea Long Chu wisely calls “the right to change sex.”

And goes on to talk about a very important figure in US trans history, Frances Thompson, a Black trans woman who transitioned while enslaved and became the first trans person to speak in Congress when she testified about being raped during the Memphis Race Riots. And I don't disagree with the importance of the "right to change sex" —I am a nonbinary transsexual and love changing sex!—or the importance on multiple levels of Thompson's story and legacy. BUT WHY IS ANY OF THIS OUR FAULT!

Frances Thompson died shortly after completing her sentence, no doubt overcome by the cruelty of the chain gang. But she left a profound legacy. The political reaction against the constitutional amendment that her testimony helped bring about demands we recognize that transitioning sex contributed to the creation of the equal protection clause. The argument that equal protection applies to transition is not a new idea invented by lawyers—and the kind of discrimination for which conservative justices expressed skepticism in Skrmetti’s concurrences is not only old but foundational to the legal fight for equal protection. Even though this argument that any unequal treatment of transition is sex discrimination is similar to the argument made by the plaintiffs in Skrmetti, it stands on a historical foundation, or originalist grounds. The equal protection of transitioning women and men under the law does not require new legal inventions, like “transgender status” or medical and scientific certification. It can confront popular legal methodology on the federal bench on its own terms.

Her point here is that the act of transitioning is the legal basis for protections, as far as I understand it. And I get why she's making that point. And, to her credit, Thompson's transition was (afaik) entirely social, so she's not just talking about medical transitioning that exists today.

But she is, transparently, telling so many people to get fucked and that we do not have the right to assert the same sense of being that binary trans people do, and that any efforts we take to do so is "class antagonism." It's no surprise that she only says "transitioning men and women." She clearly has no problems with the gender binary when it can benefit her.

Nonbinary people do not want to shake up social ideas of gender just for the hell of it. It is the only way we can survive as nonbinary people. We will never ever ever ever have our sense of self seen and recognized if society does not change in major ways. But, again, these people do not conceive of nonbinary people as having genders like them. THEIR dysphoria matters, THEIR gender matters, it is vital for THEM to be gendered correctly, but nonbinary people simply do not exist to them. They do not care about understanding nonbinary people as being people with feelings and needs like them, we must be some Other Thing they can strawmen into whatever they want.

This is why the fight for medical transition—a working-class issue of economic redistribution at its heart—can be portrayed as the elitist imposition of a corrupt ruling class ideology. The ease with which conservative justices took advantage of transgender liberal concepts and platitudes in the majority opinion and concurrences makes as much clear. Justice Roberts cleverly adopts the liberal definition of “transgender” as describing people for whom “their gender identity does not align with their sex,” and relies on the liberal truism that only “some transgender individuals suffer from gender dysphoria” to uphold Tennessee’s right to restrict medical care without it technically discriminating against all transgender people. Justice Barrett’s concurrence goes even further, citing the extremely broad “umbrella” definitions of being transgender used by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the American Psychological Association as evidence that transgender people are not discrete enough to be a suspect class that has faced discrimination. These adoptions of liberal definitions, which stress the sovereignty of personal identity over social reality, and which the court pins on expert organizations, made the plaintiffs’ case vulnerable. They are emblems of what conservative thinkers decry as neoliberal corruptions: the exalting of anti-social individualism over tradition and the coercive exercise of bureaucratic expertise over private life.

She's ilterally just doing what we've criticized Democrats for doing to all trans people. "Republicans are able to attack us because YOU PEOPLE are making us look bad with your wacky gender nonsense!" I'm sorry but if somebody talks like this there's no way you can convince me you care about nonbinary people. Not when you treat our entire sense of being like it's a trend we're putting on to feel smart and not a genuine expression of our gendered desires. And I don't really care if conservatives see me as a neoliberal corruption, because fuck them. I don't want to live in their world and I plan to use my time on this Earth to change their world as much as I reasonably can.

The field of academic transgender studies has, unfortunately, been overwhelmingly devoted to the middle-class values of the professoriate. Like the transgender liberalism out of which it emerged in the 1990s, the field’s class bias has tilted against transitioning sex, vainly championing the ostensible superiority of androgyny, or, today, a kind of immaterial, nonbinary idealism. Unsurprisingly, scholars have not been much of a source of actionable political analysis during the rising tide of anti-transgender legislation. That must change. We must study history and strategize accordingly.

Fuck you, Jules. I practice nonbinary materialism and it's called I'm a real fucking person with a real human body and my gender is not "immaterial idealism" it's MY EVERYDAY EXISTENCE. Also, I do not know where people keep getting this notion of nonbinary people being this class of snobs who drink champagne in our penthouses looking down at the blasé normie transsexuals of the street. But I live in the real world where the vast majority of out nonbinary are disrespected and insulted to our faces on a daily basis and just have to put up with it because showing the slightest amount of upset means people will see you as a massive whiny controlling bitch-slash-predator. Like Jules PLEASE show me where the institutions championing nonbinarity are!!!!!!!!!

Hell, if we want to get really really real. A mixed race nonbinary child recently died by suicide after months of bullying by students and faculty. I mean, a different one than Nex Benedict. That's the material conditions nonbinary people experience.

If you can't understand that being nonbinary actually materially impacts your mind and your health and your life and that it changes how you are treated by society and it matters that we are given a voice and place in the society we already live in, why the fuck should cis people make that effort for any trans person?

more than 1 in 2 nonbinary people have experienced discrimination or harassment at work bc of their identity. half of nonbinary employees are POC. putting they/them pronouns in your resume is equivalent to losing 2 years of relevant experience. fuck you jules

Being alterhuman does not mean you have some ~special ability~ to interact with wild animals.

DO NOT go touching/chasing/ generally messing with wildlife. You aren't special and you could harm those animals, or be harmed by them. Even small things like bugs can kill you. You aren't immune to rabies.

If you scare wild animals by chasing them for species euphoria or whatever, you can genuinly kill them. Birders have a term for when it happens to birds, its called a Dread Flight. When you unnecessarily scare a wild animal, you are causing it to waste energy it needs to survive. Wildlife can't afford to waste energy. You're enjoyment is NEVER worth disturbing wildlife.

You do not have the training to rescue wild animals just because you're alterhuman. If you don't have the actual training to resue wildlife and you genuinely find an animal in need of help, CALL A FUCKING WILDLIFE REHABILITATION CENTER!!!! It isn't that hard to find the number for your local center and they'll tell you what to do, if anything, and help you if necessary.

I am a horse. I’ve ridden other horses before, albeit as a guest at a ranch within my area. For the times I’ve visited my kind and interacted with them, I’ve done so under clear instruction from those who regularly take care of them, train them and work with them.

At no point have I ever gone out of my way to interact with my kind under the assumption that I’m engaging with them from one species member to another. Nor have I engaged with them under the assumption that— because I too am a horse— I know what I’m doing. This is because I understand mindfulness is of utmost importance. Riding is a privilege, not a right. So is engaging with your local wildlife. Your behavior makes all the difference, and those consequences are often irreversible. Besides, OP already listed some pretty good reasons on why this matters.

I know folks like to get up close and personal with animals. Usually, it’s to pet them, take pictures or act out to get a reaction out of them if they feel emboldened enough. In my case, they won’t hesitate to do so without the animals, the trail boss or any other staff who work with these animals in mind, knowing damn well they don’t know these animals or their behaviors. Sometimes, these folks turn out okay but get a scolding. Sometimes, they go into full Karen Mode because the staff did their job by addressing their guests’ behavior. I’ve seen group members get kicked out because they had the bright idea of trying to sneak inside in the stables nearby. These are individual cases from the ranch near me and the trail rides I’ve been on.

Back when I went on trail rides, I didn’t make any sudden or overly touchy movements while being paired up with a horse. I’d also watch my volume once I was in proximity with my riding companion. Yes, I’m an animal like them but I’m still responsible for my own behavior. Inappropriate behavior could bring immense distress or harm the horse and even myself. The chances of an accident happening is never a guaranteed zero. Moreover, other horses aren’t going to assume I’m socializing with them as another horse. They’re going to assume I’m posing some kind of a threat to them or refusing to back off and act accordingly, which is something that many folks— in AND outside of this community— need to keep in mind. Entitlement to an animal’s space or existence is an issue that a lot of folks have, even if that’s not your intention! To you, it may not come off as entitlement because you’re doing something that brings you some kind of euphoria. Even so, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re using another animal’s existence as an excuse to gratify yourself. That’s not okay.

I understand wanting to express your animality. I understand wanting to be recognized among your kind or among other animals in general. I get it, but you cannot jeopardize the wellbeing of your local wildlife and any other animals for your validation.

So, in terrible news, Trump's trying to pull some strings to pass this massive internet censorship bill, featuring all the kinds of internet censorship we're terrified of, including mandatory ID for accessing basically any website, specifically to crush state regulation of AI, because apparently this man will always see the moral bottom of the barrel and start digging.

Insomnia

Jing Zhiyong