Hello Yes This Is Dog

During the interaction, one cop left to get a “less than lethal” device “such as a beanbag shotgun,” which are weapons and can permanently disable and kill people. As the ACLU pointed out, they could have left the building when they felt unsafe due to Kayden having a knife; instead, they shot him in the stomach.

He was misgendered repeatedly by his mother, the police, and the news (& had apparently been denied testosterone by a doctor “until his disease [autism] was cured” which contributed to his poor mental health).

"If “man” and “woman” are opposed and mutually exclusive categories, if men can only ever be predators and women can only ever be prey, then trans men can’t exist. We are logically impossible under the terms of the current system. You either “treat us like men” by voiding out half our lives, or you write us back into womanhood by denying our male identities. I knew all that, at least in theory, but when I came out, I actually saw my life story disappearing into other people’s blind spots. I watched myself become unthinkable in real time."

Also these:

"This wasn’t about accountability. This was people tactically forgetting my entire life,including incidents from my life they had personally witnessed or been involved in, so that they could shame me for transitioning. It was bad for me to be a man; if I was a man, I was a bad man, I was all the worst things men are. I was hulking, I was threatening, I was predatory, I was violent."

"I was treated as both genders, but only the most monstrous stereotype of each one."

"The idea that I had always occupied a privileged position within patriarchy was, frankly, untrue; nor did it seem to me that a trans person was any less gender-marginalized than your average cis woman. What privilege I had was conditional, and these books were no guide. Men who wanted to “forge a positive masculinity” (and everyone was very clear that I needed one of those) were encouraged to get in touch with their “feminine sides.” Maybe that was healthy for cis guys, but I had been forced to do feminine things, and present in feminine ways, for the entirety of my young life. Whatever liberation I had achieved came from giving myself permission to stop."

As did the ending:

Folks, if you don't know who Emi Koyama was, you should. Her website (eminism.org, which is a delightful pun) has a ton of her work entirely for free.

You can read the Transfeminist Manifesto in particular here. Emi considered it a historical document and she wrote a very good self-critique in 2008 (included in the document) on the subject of the Manifesto, white feminism, and the lack of inclusion of trans and genderqueer people who aren't trans women. I highly encourage everyone who wants to involve themselves in transfeminism to read her work, not because it is perfect, but because I do think Emi Koyama's Manifesto represents the best intentions for transfeminism: the desire to challenge cissexism, to take activism seriously and compassionately, and a commitment to being open and honest about where we fall short and how we can do better.

I really appreciate this quote from her, which I hadn't seen before, on the subject of feminism needing to "fit in" trans people:

Cis feminists do not own feminism. We don't need to "fit trans people into feminist theory"; we simply need to challenge cissexism in feminist movements and theories. Trans people do not need to be explained by feminist theory; we need to start from the fact that trans people exist and matter.

And it would be a crime to not mention how hard she fought specifically for women of color, to challenge racism and imperialism (white/western and non-white/non-western) in feminist spaces and in general, as well as her intersex activism, and far more. She had such a drive to contribute to, engage with, and push for more and better feminist discourse.

"If “man” and “woman” are opposed and mutually exclusive categories, if men can only ever be predators and women can only ever be prey, then trans men can’t exist. We are logically impossible under the terms of the current system. You either “treat us like men” by voiding out half our lives, or you write us back into womanhood by denying our male identities. I knew all that, at least in theory, but when I came out, I actually saw my life story disappearing into other people’s blind spots. I watched myself become unthinkable in real time."

Also these:

"This wasn’t about accountability. This was people tactically forgetting my entire life,including incidents from my life they had personally witnessed or been involved in, so that they could shame me for transitioning. It was bad for me to be a man; if I was a man, I was a bad man, I was all the worst things men are. I was hulking, I was threatening, I was predatory, I was violent."

"I was treated as both genders, but only the most monstrous stereotype of each one."

"The idea that I had always occupied a privileged position within patriarchy was, frankly, untrue; nor did it seem to me that a trans person was any less gender-marginalized than your average cis woman. What privilege I had was conditional, and these books were no guide. Men who wanted to “forge a positive masculinity” (and everyone was very clear that I needed one of those) were encouraged to get in touch with their “feminine sides.” Maybe that was healthy for cis guys, but I had been forced to do feminine things, and present in feminine ways, for the entirety of my young life. Whatever liberation I had achieved came from giving myself permission to stop."

As did the ending:

unfortunately anon so, so many people have not actually agreed that. a lot of people have never heard the term oppositional sexism & i've even see some people on tumblr throwing it around & saying "transandrobros don't understand oppositional sexism" while engaging in oppositional sexism.

its also crazy because The Transfeminist Manifesto is pretty anti-oppositional sexism as Emi Koyama was capable of appreciating nuance. frankly i knowwww none of these fucking people have read the Manifesto, because Emi wrote an entire section on Male Privilege where she makes the explicit argument that trans women are capable of experiencing male privilege because anyone can, including a cis woman with a traditionally masculine name, and that trans women shouldn't downplay this since it isn't helpful to building solidarity and it allows cis women to argue they don't have cis privilege just because they are women and so the cisness cancels out.

and i fucking KNOW if someone posted that exact argument on here, plenty of the people who consider themselves the defenders of trve transfeminism on here would call it transmisogynistic and tear it apart. like.

idk man. isn't it kind of telling that so many people on here seem to think Julia Serano, a white American woman who while having her own nuanced and important contributions to transfeminism and feminism in general, also has a history of contributing to anti-transmasculine and exorsexist myths, is the founder of transfeminism.

meanwhile, the term transfeminism was first put in print by Patrick Califia, a trans man who wrote prominently as a pro-BDSM lesbian in 1997, and then in 2001 Emi Koyama, an intersex Japanese trans woman who also didn't consider herself to have a gender, critiqued white feminism for tokenizing women of color and ignoring racial analysis, critiqued perisex trans people for viewing gender as a construct but still believing the sex binary, critiqued "reverse essentialism" where trans people "adopt the essentialist notion of gender identity" because "essentializing our gender identity can be just as dangerous as resorting to biological essentialism," who i cannot stress this enough literally wrote this in the section on violence against women:

Trans men also live in the constant fear of discovery as they navigate in a society that persecutes men who step outside of their socially established roles. Crimes against trans men are committed by strangers as well as by close “friends,” and are undoubtedly motivated by a combination of transphobia and misogyny, performed as a punishment for violating gender norms in order to put them back in a "woman's place."

and STILL wrote a postscript saying a fundamental problem she saw with her manifesto was

"Overemphasis on male-to-female trans people at the expense of female-to-male trans people and others who identify as transgender or genderqueer. I take full blame for the fact that this manifesto is heavily focused on issues male-to-female transsexual people face, while neglecting unique struggles that female-to-male trans people and other transgender and genderqueer people face. At the time I wrote this piece, I felt the need to restrict the focus of feminism to “women” because I feared that expanding the focus would permit non-trans men to exploit feminism for their interest, as some so-called men’s rights groups do. While I still feel that this fear is justified, I now realize that privileging transsexual women’s issues at the expense of other trans and genderqueer people was a mistake. [...] I have thought about writing a new manifesto to address these and other insights I gained since 2000, with the confidence and clarity I have now, but for now I am leaving the task to others. If you write one, please send it to me.

& in 2008:

I wanted to write a feminist theory that counter the argument that transsexual women were so different from all other women that there is no place for transsexual women within feminism (or that feminism has no use for transsexual women). I wanted to provide easy-to-repeat arguments that pro-trans feminists can use to confront blatant bigotry and falsehoods against transsexual women. And to these ends, I think “Manifesto” was successful. But there was something unsettling about the “Manifesto.” In an effort to forge an alliance between transsexual and non-transsexual women, the piece neglected the struggles of transsexual men and other transgender or genderqueer people who do not identify as “women” unless it was convenient to include them. The piece was also weak on intersectional analysis–that is, how anti-trans sentiments and oppressions compound and complicate oppressions other than sexism, including and especially racism and classism. It borrowed from the work of women of color when it was useful–for example, to point out that transsexual women’s unique experiences should not be the basis for their exclusion because to do so would presuppose a singular universal female experience, which is obviously false–without contributing any insights as to how the inclusion of trans sensibility helps to fight racism and other oppressions. The fact is, I had only been living in my new home town for three months or so when I wrote this piece, and I was not fully in touch with my own discomfort with the white feminism that filled nine out of ten weeks of the Introduction to Women’s Studies, nor did I feel confident enough to challenge the view that feminism is simply about advocating for women and fighting sexism–and nothing more. In short, what I had written was a version of white feminism that was modified just enough to include transsexual women. At the time, I felt that it was the only safe way to write a feminist theory that advanced transsexual women’s place within feminism. I spent next couple of years meeting more people with a common commitment for justice for all, slowly building the self-confidence it takes to “transform silence into language and action,” as Audre famously stated.

(& i think there are good criticisms that can be made of the Manifesto, but that does not change my respect for it because she engaged in self-critique and wanted the work to be open to criticism, to be a beginning and not limit to active transfeminism theory and practice).

like. interesting how a lot of self-proclaimed transfeminists on here are outspokenly explicitly against the beliefs of both of the trans people who helped popularize the term. people have been pointing the problems with this shit out for 2 decades at this point & y'all think its just tumblr discourse.

that being said. can we not erase the fact the entire conversation began with disabled people talking about being medically abused pretty please. & also, iirc the post that first really blew up about "mean girl nurses" never said "ALL nurses are evil bitches who hate everyone and they deserve to be mistreated" it was saying "women who sought power over other people in high school go into careers where they can wield power over other people, same as men, and there are women who go into nursing and present themselves as kind and caring and maternal, who are motivated by a desire to have unquestioned authority over other people's bodies to make themselves feel powerful, again, same as men who do the same things in masculinized careers." & i just find it "interesting" how all that has been reduced down to "all nurses are mean girls")

i think nuance is always important & doctors and nurses do need better treatment and society frequently praises them while also supporting their abuse. and yet they are also universally recognized as vital important members of society & empowered to have immense control over the lives of people who are systemically vulnerable and seen as leeches who add nothing to society. and yet who has to deal with the impacts of their stress and their trauma and their anger and their burnout? the disabled people under their care.

again. Nuance! but i just cannot help but Side Eye In Cripple some things people say on this topic. it can both be true that nurses (& doctors) experience horrible working conditions and that, in my opinion, that any conversation about burnout and abuse of medical professionals needs to also criticize the authoritarianism of the medical field and how widespread medical neglect and abuse is, lest we simply fall back into "the poor beleagured doctor who is Jesus Christ On The Cross Himself, all-wise and all-knowing and forced to tolerate all these entitled know-it-all ungrateful patients!" which changes nothing for anyone.

like. look at this article. the actual context for the "mean girl to nurse pipeline" (that some women seek out power over people to control them and make themselves feel bigger, and women are likely to do this through caretaking in the role of nurse, teacher, mother, etc.) is not brought up at all. the fixation is entirely on "its mean to call nurses mean girls! they experience a lot of bullying! you don't REALLY know any mean nurses, just poor tired bullied ones!"

First, the phrase itself is unfair to women. Although nursing is a female-dominated field, this phrase focuses on women as being the “mean” ones to worry about.

like. do youuuu fucking see the erasure of medical abuse. the actual bullshit nurses do to real living human beings, which goes massively under-reported. & not just disabled people but people of color as well. god fucking forbid medical professionals are treated as anything but literal saints descended from heaven. god forbid white cisgender women are recognized to have the ability to be cruel and power-hungry and to hurt other people through traditionally feminine roles based on caretaking. like I genuinely do understand that nurses are subject to immense stress, bullying, and violence, and that providing better working conditions for nurses is vital to improving medical treatment for all patients.

but when the actual neglect and abuse nurses can do to their patients is ignored and drops out of the conversation entirely, in the name of complaining about nurses being called "mean"? sorry but it pisses me the fuck off.

(links to some sources on patient abuse under the cut since this is long enough as is)

Working Guys is a collection of stories by transmasculine sex workers that take readers through different moments in their lives.  The stories intersect between a few central themes, such as perceptions, media representation, and violence inflicted on trans sex workers. These nudge us to look at support systems and systematic changes required to address vulnerability, outlining the grey area between empowerment and vulnerabilities transmasculine sex workers face.

How far can one conform to expected ideas of gender before it becomes harmful?

“He told me that he struggled to see me as a man because I sell sex … and I found it hard to see the version of myself that I hid behind for work as anything other than a woman too. What he said to me had spread the sickness and I felt unsure in my identity. I pretended to be a woman for work, so people saw me as one outside of it too.” -- "Only women sell sex" by Liam

In the anthology, several contributors recount the bittersweet irony of adopting female persons to cater to the demands of the market. This performance, often described as “cis for pay”, often binds trans sex workers to conform to different gendered expectations. When transmascs fail to meet the binary societal expectations of how a ‘man’ should look or behave, they are faced with violence of all types and degrees. Sex workers capitalising aspects of oneself that can be eroticised is a form of powerful personal reclamation. On the flip side however, it leans into or even perpetuates harmful stereotypes that eroticise certain traits, further resulting in discrimination and violence. 

Why are sex workers’ choices about their own bodies often subjected to the opinions of others?

“If you’re selling your body, isn’t it prudent to keep everything intact? Surely you’d lose customers if you had this surgery.” -- "An Appointment at Charing Cross" by Mx Dagger

In stories shared, several contributors to the anthology mention experiences where they were “hammered on details, including the type of sex work that were done” during requests for medical references for gender affirming surgery. These experiences highlight a higher barrier for trans people when it comes to obtaining medical support for their gender affirming procedures, which can have harmful consequences since many may choose to omit information when dealing with medical professions to avoid stigmatisation. This is in addition to the astronomical cost of medical transition that pushes many trans people into higher-risk work environments. These narratives challenge us to acknowledge that the fight for accessible transition care is inseparable from the broader struggle against economic and social marginalisation.

The invisibility of transmasculine sex workers. 

Unlike their transfeminine counterparts—who, despite facing greater physical risks, benefit from more robust community networks—transmascs often find themselves isolated, struggling to advertise and represent themselves in spaces where few have a mental concept of what it means to be transmasculine. Highlighting the lived experiences of transmasculine sex workers is crucial when addressing the concerns of the sex worker community as a whole. However, over reliance on an individual’s experience in the sex industry might undermine other experiences faced by different sex workers. Hence it is important to continually highlight the diversity of the community.  Joey, our ex-intern, penned down some of her thoughts while she was reading the book as a sex worker herself:   “The truth is I often feel deeply ambivalent about my work – I’m torn between the desire to defend it (because I enjoy it) and the desire to critique it (because it’s work, and I would prefer not to need to work, or at least to be able to do so in better conditions). I never lie about my work, but I find it difficult to convey my thoughts effectively, while avoiding narratives that speak in absolutes: sex work being wholly degrading and exploitative, or sex work being entirely unproblematic and enjoyable. For me it’s somewhere in the middle—often a little of both.”

Conclusion

Working Guys challenge traditional views and push for different forms of empowerment, shaping a more holistic view of what transgender people experience. While doing so, Jack Parker uses the book as a platform to voice transmasculine perspectives and resilience in the face of adversity and challenges. A recurring theme, empowerment within the transmasculine community was highlighted in various ways – as allies and sex workers. This is rooted in the belief that individuals should make decisions based on what aligns with their beliefs, rather than conforming to external factors. By reading this, hopefully it gives us the strength – like what Parker is doing – to advocate for and empower transmasculine sex workers.

You can get Working Guys as a PDF here, or as a paperback here.

especially when they are fat. especially when they are Black or Native or Asian or any racial/ethnic group that isn't white. especially when they are tall and broad and have a deep voice and a beard, and especially when they like themselves that way and still are hurt by misgendering. especially when they have gone on E and T blockers and have gotten facial feminization and vaginoplasty and have DD tits and like themselves that way and still are hurt by misgendering (even when people think they should be grateful for it, even when it feels like the lesser of two evils). especially when they transition in ways people see as "only halfway" and dress androgynous and use contradictory labels and call themselves femboys in the same breathe they do tgirls and they like themselves clockable as fuck and still are hurt by transphobia and exorsexism.

Gender is constructed, yes, but there are some things that are indeed mutually exclusive. From a class perspective, a trans woman cannot be a gay man. Man and woman are, at the same time, totally-constructed, mutually exclusive categories AND (!) material realities that exist. The class conditions of men and women are different, because women face structural misogyny, and men do not. People split the lines of these two classes all the time, but this doesn’t mean these two, specific, mutually exclusice classes don’t exist.

While the classes of woman and man as well as their class interests (the destruction or the continuation of misogyny, respectively) are real, the concepts themselves of man and woman don’t map neatly onto reality, and this absurd imposition of fiction onto reality creates massive suffering, as does the real class structure this fiction supports. Just as there’s no innate, permanent, immutable, and solid difference between a capitalist and a worker, there’s no such difference between men and women. This is the ground reality below the infrastructure, below the structure, and below the superstructures of society. Those structures also have no innate, permanent, immutable, or solid existence. But the experiences that people have from them are just as real as anything else. These structures and categories are constantly shaped and reshaped by the actions of society. People move between the gender classes all the time. Pointing out the absurd difference between how people are treated as classes by saying oxymoronic identities like “gay man who is a trans woman” can help reduce their power, trying to get rid of class labels altogether won’t undo the conflicts between classes. It just makes it harder to see what’s going on while those class conflicts happen out of sight if nobody can talk about it.

I am one of the women you were talking about in this post, the fat trans woman who has facial hair, and a trans woman who tried being a gay boy. I seriously identified as a girlfag for years. I stopped, though, when I saw that I lost access to my gay male life completely once I transitioned past a certain point. The moment that I was seen as a woman, trans or cis, by gay men, I was an outsider to them. Sometimes there are gay men who see me as a man. They are a little more warm to me, but only when they can fuck me. Which I don’t like doing bc they think i’m a dude and it feels terrible for me ewwwwww.

But can you see where I’m coming from? I’m just one girl, but I think that adopting the framework of real class interests/constructed gender could contribute to the liberation of women and therefore the complete freedom to move between categories. Also, I think this is important enough to write a response to a stranger because this very conversation could change how some trans women are treated. The treatment we got as “gay men who identify as women” was something we fought to change, and I don’t want to see that clock turned back.

I just fundamentally disagree on pretty much every level that how people should identify needs to be exclusively grounded in their material class position (as decided by The Council, I suppose, because clearly they have no say in the matter). Again, I see no real difference between what you have said here and the well-formed, earnest, rational arguments made by many transphobic feminists as to why they may sympathize with trans women but fundamentally disagree on a materialist basis that they should be allowed to call themselves women given the perceived danger of making it harder to discuss the class differences between females and males. Its the exact same line of thinking.

I am sorry you had those experiences while identifying that way. You are correct that you are one girl, and your experiences and feelings are one individual's experiences and feelings, and what you have said is not all that convincing to me. You seem to be engaging with the idea of "a trans woman who is a gay man" on a largely theoretical, ideological basis, which is, again, always bad for all trans people. Using your personal experiences and feelings as proof to back up your theorization does not make it more grounded in the material reality of many people, including people who identify as trans women and gay men and do not feel the way you feel and do not interpret their experiences with transphobia & othering in gay men's spaces the way you do.

Men do face structural misogyny. Trans men exist. And trans women who also identify as men exist. I myself am multigender and am both a man and a woman, although given what you've written here, I can only imagine you feel that identity is impossible or harmful in some way because it is not binary and "materialist" enough in your eyes. But frankly, there is no way to be anything other than hostile to nonbinary people given the very limited version of trans materialism you've described here. Clinging so hard to the gender binary & basing your materialist analysis, not on many people's material experiences but on theoreticals and your personal feelings and experience, is harmful to other trans people.

If you are curious, my pinned post has a lot of links regarding the kind of transfeminism I engage with, although much of that is focused on anti-transmasculinity. To quote Emi Koyama, author of the Transfeminist Manifesto:

Cis feminists do not own feminism. We don't need to "fit trans people into feminist theory"; we simply need to challenge cissexism in feminist movements and theories. Trans people do not need to be explained by feminist theory; we need to start from the fact that trans people exist and matter.

especially when they are fat. especially when they are Black or Native or Asian or any racial/ethnic group that isn't white. especially when they are tall and broad and have a deep voice and a beard, and especially when they like themselves that way and still are hurt by misgendering. especially when they have gone on E and T blockers and have gotten facial feminization and vaginoplasty and have DD tits and like themselves that way and still are hurt by misgendering (even when people think they should be grateful for it, even when it feels like the lesser of two evils). especially when they transition in ways people see as "only halfway" and dress androgynous and use contradictory labels and call themselves femboys in the same breathe they do tgirls and they like themselves clockable as fuck and still are hurt by transphobia and exorsexism.

Gender is constructed, yes, but there are some things that are indeed mutually exclusive. From a class perspective, a trans woman cannot be a gay man. Man and woman are, at the same time, totally-constructed, mutually exclusive categories AND (!) material realities that exist. The class conditions of men and women are different, because women face structural misogyny, and men do not. People split the lines of these two classes all the time, but this doesn’t mean these two, specific, mutually exclusice classes don’t exist.

While the classes of woman and man as well as their class interests (the destruction or the continuation of misogyny, respectively) are real, the concepts themselves of man and woman don’t map neatly onto reality, and this absurd imposition of fiction onto reality creates massive suffering, as does the real class structure this fiction supports. Just as there’s no innate, permanent, immutable, and solid difference between a capitalist and a worker, there’s no such difference between men and women. This is the ground reality below the infrastructure, below the structure, and below the superstructures of society. Those structures also have no innate, permanent, immutable, or solid existence. But the experiences that people have from them are just as real as anything else. These structures and categories are constantly shaped and reshaped by the actions of society. People move between the gender classes all the time. Pointing out the absurd difference between how people are treated as classes by saying oxymoronic identities like “gay man who is a trans woman” can help reduce their power, trying to get rid of class labels altogether won’t undo the conflicts between classes. It just makes it harder to see what’s going on while those class conflicts happen out of sight if nobody can talk about it.

I am one of the women you were talking about in this post, the fat trans woman who has facial hair, and a trans woman who tried being a gay boy. I seriously identified as a girlfag for years. I stopped, though, when I saw that I lost access to my gay male life completely once I transitioned past a certain point. The moment that I was seen as a woman, trans or cis, by gay men, I was an outsider to them. Sometimes there are gay men who see me as a man. They are a little more warm to me, but only when they can fuck me. Which I don’t like doing bc they think i’m a dude and it feels terrible for me ewwwwww.

But can you see where I’m coming from? I’m just one girl, but I think that adopting the framework of real class interests/constructed gender could contribute to the liberation of women and therefore the complete freedom to move between categories. Also, I think this is important enough to write a response to a stranger because this very conversation could change how some trans women are treated. The treatment we got as “gay men who identify as women” was something we fought to change, and I don’t want to see that clock turned back.

I just fundamentally disagree on pretty much every level that how people should identify needs to be exclusively grounded in their material class position (as decided by The Council, I suppose, because clearly they have no say in the matter). Again, I see no real difference between what you have said here and the well-formed, earnest, rational arguments made by many transphobic feminists as to why they may sympathize with trans women but fundamentally disagree on a materialist basis that they should be allowed to call themselves women given the perceived danger of making it harder to discuss the class differences between females and males. Its the exact same line of thinking.

I am sorry you had those experiences while identifying that way. You are correct that you are one girl, and your experiences and feelings are one individual's experiences and feelings, and what you have said is not all that convincing to me. You seem to be engaging with the idea of "a trans woman who is a gay man" on a largely theoretical, ideological basis, which is, again, always bad for all trans people. Using your personal experiences and feelings as proof to back up your theorization does not make it more grounded in the material reality of many people, including people who identify as trans women and gay men and do not feel the way you feel and do not interpret their experiences with transphobia & othering in gay men's spaces the way you do.

Men do face structural misogyny. Trans men exist. And trans women who also identify as men exist. I myself am multigender and am both a man and a woman, although given what you've written here, I can only imagine you feel that identity is impossible or harmful in some way because it is not binary and "materialist" enough in your eyes. But frankly, there is no way to be anything other than hostile to nonbinary people given the very limited version of trans materialism you've described here. Clinging so hard to the gender binary & basing your materialist analysis, not on many people's material experiences but on theoreticals and your personal feelings and experience, is harmful to other trans people.

If you are curious, my pinned post has a lot of links regarding the kind of transfeminism I engage with, although much of that is focused on anti-transmasculinity. To quote Emi Koyama, author of the Transfeminist Manifesto:

Cis feminists do not own feminism. We don't need to "fit trans people into feminist theory"; we simply need to challenge cissexism in feminist movements and theories. Trans people do not need to be explained by feminist theory; we need to start from the fact that trans people exist and matter.

Even if they weren't organized as such the settlers still would continue their genocidal campaign, but it also further shows that at its core the United States, and the west as a whole, does not care about the sovereignty of *any nation* that isn't white, no matter their organization or level of wealth or literacy, or even if the United States Constitution was directly ripped from their own.