#mandragores

C'est pire que ça encore ! Parce que les petits cons ne se rendent absolument pas compte de la manière dont fonctionnent ces élections.

Marine Le Pen n'aurait jamais obtenu la majorité. Macron ? Il va récupérer 400 députés sur 577. Tu sais comment ? L'alliance entre LaREM et Les Républicains, structurelle et indépassable, va lui assurer une majorité écrasante.

I’ll... try to be civil about this and thank you for being civil in expressing your disagreement, but I don’t think I lost the plot here at all for a lot of reasons, as in, not counting that the source you’re leaving me is a website hosted by someone who, googling, does not seem to me like an authority on trans matters nor an exceedingly liberal person though what concerns me more is that she apparently is like ‘we should be skeptical of the covid vaccine’, but in order:

that article talks about specific people being not convinced about using the blockers etc before a certain age etc but like... transition in children is basically using their chosen name and let them present as they want. no one as far as I know says it’s okay to use puberty blockers on children, that article mentioned two doctors and one case which is also a reality show person I mean... I don’t think it’s representative of all doctors nor of all trans people who get surgery;

that person specifically is one specific case but I can assure you that with the waiting times around and how long it takes to get a diagnosis/hormone treatment clearance at least where I come from and in Europe (and in the US too unless you pay out of pocket) no one who isn’t rich in the first place is going to be able to afford blockers, hormones or surgery the moment they turn 18;

‘transition in children is risky and non-reversible’: yes, and that’s why puberty blockers - blockers - are a thing if you manage to get them (which most people... don’t so easily), no one performs surgery on children or teens before they turn 18 for that kind of reassignment surgery, and no one said that it should be a thing because you shouldn’t do any of that before you’re 18 anyway but like... I never met a trans activist who said the contrary, while most trans people you’ll talk to could tell you at a young age that they felt different and would come to identify it later, and like... maybe if children were taught what it means when they’re young without fear of being judged they’d realize sooner but anyway, on to what’s my point, which is...

this entire thing is just dogwhistling for terfism. saying ‘oh my god the trans activists want the children to transition and it’s irreversible they’re BAD!!!!’ is terfism 101 as in an argument that doesn’t exist except in some fringes (because I’m sure some extremists would be okay with that but the medical community isn’t so it’s a moot point) which paints the horrible trans activists/people in a bad light because they want to harm the children;

which we can also see wrt what jkr does concerning that incident in which she said that she was on twitter talking to children showing her fanart for that other book she wrote (children in theory can’t be on twitter but that’s something she never addressed) and supposed trans activists showed up posting porn on her feed for which no one has receipts or screencaps and ‘oh my god those horrible predators!!!’, which... most likely was a lie but ‘trans activists target the children!!’ is like... basic terf rhetoric, so now I’ll be a bit suspicious of anything she says in that matter because sorry but I’d like to think I’m not falling for that rhetoric;

this entire background is aimed at discrediting trans activists and actually harms actual adult trans people because guess what terfs and so on aren’t exactly not an entity when it comes to trying to influence legislation and jkr speaking for them just gives them extra ammo;

now, if you look at the status of trans rights for adults in the uk, at the moment, the summary from what I gather is ‘people wait four years for the first psychological evaluation’ because that’s how long waiting lists are, like not the hormones, the first psychological evaluation, which I suppose means that if you don’t have the money to pay for it in private - and I doubt it’s cheap - if you’re an adult trans person who knows they’re trans and needs a diagnosis/reassignment surgery/to go on hormones in the UK you’re looking at.... at least eight years’ waiting time because if it takes you four years to talk to the psychologist idk how long it is over there to get a diagnosis but I don’t think I’m too far off the mark if I suppose that the waiting lists for the actual surgeries are even longer, and like.... that’s not good at all;

jkr lives in the UK and she finances terf organizations who actively oppose pro-trans rights legislation which means that if it was up to them those people wouldn’t have accesso to resources at all, and all the ‘think of the children’ rhetoric is just a mask to hide the fact that they hate trans people, dot, because who gets harmed by it is not trans children who can not have surgery or take hormones anyway, it’s the ADULTS who have to wait longer to get treatment;

I don’t know if I have to add that untreated gender dysphoria has effects including depression, self-harm, suicidal instincts and so on, and that trans people are a minority of a minority, which means that all this think of the poor children rhetoric is there to basically negate human rights to a minority of people whose legitimacy has been proved scientifcially time and time again like trans people exist and gender dysphoria is a thing and denying them even the free psychological support is like... denying people their human rights same as not recognizing them as such, and with this I mean that jkr/terfs keep on talking about trans women as men in women’s spaces even if they mask it with other crap rhetoric, and if jrk has unresolved issues with men - which is understandable given her background - she can use the shitton of money she made to find a good therapist instead of going in crusades against trans women/trans people and actually harming real people, because when SHE, the most famous writer in the world as much as I wish she wasn’t, endorses that bigotry she gives them a platform they could only dream of;

and with this I mean that if orson scott card is a racist on main he does a lot less damage than jkr does by being a terf on main bc he doesn’t have nearly the same number of fans, but let’s move on;

terf ideology as a certain prominent feminist pointed out in a guardian interview before they oh wait censored that specific part, hmmmmmmmm guess why, is basically a gateway to far right wing shores because terfs do not give a fuck about women that aren’t other terfs and those women are most of the time cis and rich and a lot of other things I generally don’t approve of (anti-kink? anti-sex work? anti-women having a different opinions than them? anti-men in general except that then they’re more obsessed with dick than just about anyone?) and radical feminism/terfism does absolutely shit for women in general and the fact they don’t gaf about trans people and are so against their existance/recognition is not at all different from how right wing bigots are anti-trans people, except the latter don’t pretend they are progressives or that they care about women’s rights, and considering that 90% of the terfs I ever ran into also kept on ranting about how motherhood was a fundamental part of being a woman and oh wait TRANS WOMEN BAD THEY WANT TO APPROPRIATE IT but apparently that also means any woman who doesn’t want children or can’t have them then isn’t a woman? every single anti-trans argument they have is an anti-progressive argument and jkr isn’t any different;

and giving terfs even just a single inch on any matter means opening the door to their frankly harmful rhetoric and the fact that most of them can’t even conceive that margaret atwood doesn’t agree with them to the point that I saw terfs saying handmaid’s tale is not feminist or pro-women but like torture porn concerning women after she told them she wasn’t a terf about says everything about a) how they’ll throw under the bus anyone who doesn’t think like them, b) rewrite entire narratives that are actually feminist/progressive into OMG BAD rhetoric, c) how they only care about other terfs, and the trans rights thing is again, just the surface of the entire story;

tldr: children do not get surgery or hormones that can harm them, two single doctors not agreeing with blockers doesn’t make the entirety of the medical field, jkr is wrong because she opposes trans rights and supports a fake feminist movement that’s basically far right dressed in women’s rights propaganda that sounds like the 19th century anyway and I don’t think I’m dropping the ball if I say that terfs should not be given a platform, especially not jkr’s, that people into HP should be highly critical of whatever jkr does and stop giving her money and most of all that I care more about trans rights for adult people than about whatever jkr has to say about the supposed children she cares about, bc if she gave a fuck about trans children - which do exist - or trans people she wouldn’t be supporting a hate movement that’s also generally very anti-women that aren’t part of said movement.

“any dirty goat with a brain cell could see that false concern is disengenuous [sic] as fuck”

anyway, if you really gave a shit about ex-muslims, you wouldn’t be rushing to the armchair cluster b diagnoses as soon as one says something you don’t like. This is what every other political faction does to ex-muslims and after spending the last 17 years outside of the middle east, I recognize it when I see it.

When it’s time to pay respects to sexist bullshit like hijab and fgm, then liberals are all lined up, but when your hijabi pawns don’t see transwomen as real women, it’s under the bus with them.

When it’s time to listen to ex-muslims about the dangers of Islam, conservatives are all ready to go, but when it comes time to criticize US foreign policy or homophobia, suddenly it’s time to shout us down and harass us.

When it’s time to listen to sad stories about fgm and beatings and rape, certain radfems are all ready to get off on the human tragedy, but if you ask those same women not to call us racist epithets, suddenly we’re all dirty goats who also have cluster b, and are also assholes and dicks and cunts or whatever. Suddenly it’s time to fantasize about us being anally raped.

I just can't help but show you these two little Automnalis Mandrakes...

I'll stop there, but i'll just add that the porn twitter at Rowling was well and truly a thing. I'm not a fan of "receipt" compilations in either direction, because i think it's easy for anyone to write anything online, but i personally saw at least one person posting a picture of themself with their dick out (sorry) on one of the threads in question. Obviously i'm aware i'm just one person online and you don't have any reason to trust me. We do have the receipts for all the rape threats / death threats though, and i'm not sure what JKR has *done* that convinces you that she'd be lying on this (as opposed to a neutral "i haven't seen it so might be true, might not be").

I'll allow the reply of course, but I still don't think any of this makes a convincing argument, in the sense that:

I checked two out of three links because one sends me to a website that my antivirus says has phishing going on so I don't think I'll take it as a trusted source. the last one says nothing against the side-effects - it says they're safe overall but we can't know if there are any side effects until the people taking them now get older which is like.. same as any med in existence and other than that it says nothing that would make me think a blocker or whatever it is isn't a safer option for trans teenagers than risking self-harm or suicide, the other link listed some possible side effects which might not be a thing for everyone and like... I mean, again, if I was a trans teenager and felt suicidal because of dysphoria and they told me 'okay you can take them and feel better but this this and that might happen or you can stay as it is' I'd probably chance the blockers anyway, and maybe they're not fully reversible but I'd wager that if you know you're not a cisgender person you'd chance that anyway;

10-16 is teenagers, not children. I mean, I'll say a 15yo is a child if I'm talking about 'don't put teenagers in charge of an army' or 'don't make teenagers take life or death decisions' or 'don't put heavy responsibility on teenagers' because a 15yo shouldn't be in charge of, say, taking their single parent off life support if they have no other family and the parent ends up in an accident, but if we're discussing this stuff children are not teenagers and when saying 'think of the children' people immediately think of actual *children* not teens, and again no one gives puberty blockers nor performs surgeries on people younger than that UNLESS as someone else pointed out in my replies it's cis kids starting puberty at like NINE and they're given blockers because it's too early and honestly as someone who got her period at twelve I could have used waiting two more years myself, I can't imagine someone who gets it at nine, so if even cis kids use them for a couple years when their doctor thinks it's the case... I mean the point is still moot, they're meds like any other and they can have side effects like any other, it depends on whether your doctor sucks or not;

like, momentarily OT but at some point in my life I had a crap doctor who at some point had decided to prescribe me some pills that diabetics usually take because according to him I didn't process sugar in my blood well enough or something and I took them and I lost 5kgs in three weeks because that shit made me nauseous, I kept on feeling sick, I lost my appetite, the problem I had didn't get better and then when I stopped them along with other pills that dude gave me the result was that I didn't get my period for three months and it was miserable, I gained some 10 extra kgs I wasn't able to lose for years and it was 90% because I took that stuff, am I going around saying that people should watch their diabetes medication because it fucked with me? no, because I shouldn't have been taking them and my doctor was shit but it wasn't the fault of the meds, I'm 100% sure they were helpful to others that actually needed them and weren't wrongly prescribed them and maybe for them the side-effects weren't as bad as they were for me, same concept;

which brings us to: how she was essentially rushed through the process of transitioning, encouraged by the homophobia within her own family that was barely questioned by her therapists? it's extremely unfortunate that it was the case, but... that's because she had shit therapists and a homophobic family, because if that wasn't the case then it wouldn't have happened and the problem isn't that puberty blockers exist or that trans teens take them, it's that you need better doctors and people should be educated to not be homophobic, and that's valid also for trans kids who know they are and can't get help/resources until they're 18 because their families are homophobic, so I don't see how one case like this is a reason to be concerned about the practice at large;

the case you discussed... what I'm reading is that one doctor was too liberal with giving out those blockers which by the way as the other person pointed out were thought of also to be given to kids as young as ten and not just because of gender dysphoria, the one that sued raised concerns that weren't taken seriously and she sued and won because they should have handled the matter differently but how is that, again, supposed to be a reason why I should be concerned about it at large if we're still talking about single doctors and single cases? it's always like that, it's not each single kid or a large majority of the kids who ever took a puberty blocker had issues, which would be what would make it concerning, and again... you solve that problem by not having shit doctors - which sadly happens - and making sure it's triple checked before prescribing medications and that the families don't suck, which isn't something that's going to happen if people keep on saying the trans agenda is ruining our children or that there's a trans cult etc because it's not an agenda nor a cult, it's real people who have rights to exist and honestly, like.... I'm a cis woman so whatever, but I had a D cup at thirteen. if I had been a trans guy and I had known from before would I have rather gone through those side effects of the meds and not having developed a D cup or let it happen and then sweat cold at the idea of having top surgery taking out that much breast? because I think I'd have rather chanced the meds;

then: but i'll just add that the porn twitter at Rowling was well and truly a thing okay, but was it when children were present to see it? because that's the concerning thing in case AND again, twitter shouldn't be used by people under the age of 13, so like if rowling was talking to children under 13 on twitter knowing it it was breaking the website's rules. and if someone sent her porn... that's inappropriate but I'm 100% sure that any celebrity in existence with a social media gets sent that at some point, which is why they hire people to look at their replies, so the point is, did children see that porn and was she anyway agreeing with having children on a platform that by its own TOS should not be used by anyone under the age of 13 anyway? because like... let's say that I am babysitting a bunch of kids under the age of 13 and I bring them to idk some open cinema thing where I don't know what they're gonna air but we'll just sit and find out and I'm stupid and I make them see Watchmen: if the kids get traumatized, whose fault is that? mine for bringing them somewhere they could engage with content not aimed at them. so if rowling is like 'MAKE YOUR KIDS SHOW UP ON TWITTER TO SEND ME DRAWINGS' she's automatically putting them in danger to be shown stuff they shouldn't see bc twitter is not aimed at her readership, dot. so honestly I don't have much sympathy for her even if it was true that children saw it, which I still didn't see any receipt of - wrt porn being sent at her, as stated I don't think a single celebrity on earth hasn't been sent either porn or thirst stuff, so like... honestly if I made the money she did I'd pay someone to report that shit and be done with it;

finally, We do have the receipts for all the rape threats / death threats though, and i'm not sure what JKR has *done* that convinces you that she'd be lying on this (as opposed to a neutral "i haven't seen it so might be true, might not be"). I never said she lied about getting death threats - I'm saying she lied about children being subjected to trans activism related porn (and the guy with the dick out could have been any idiot not necessarily a trans-related person). I'm sure she got them - I mean, I'm no one in comparison to rowling, I only ever wrote fanfic and I have once received 600 message in one hour telling me to kill myself and I have a museum of receipts of people saying I should die or I should have been raped or aborted and it was just from being on tumblr posting fanfic and shooting the shit for ten years, I don't doubt that she got death or rape threats online and I agree that she shouldn't have gotten them nor that it's any way to engage with people you disagree with - I want people to stop sharing her content and giving her money, not to wish her to get raped or killed. however, the point is that jkr will get those threats and can hire a social media manager to get rid of them, or live in the knowledge that even if some rando on twitter does it it will never physically harm her because she lives in a damned castle and can pay lawyers for an eternity to sue those people if she likes, and it's extremely unlikely that any of those randos can actually harm her. meanwhile, the fact that she finances terfs/hate movements/gives them a voice and so on actually harms trans people because those ppl fight for more restrictive legislation when in the UK it's already bad off - again FOUR YEARS for a psychology referral after you turn 18 means four years of untreated gender dysphoria and I don't think gender criticals realize what the fuck that means and that's just the first thing that comes to mind. the trans ppl jkr's views harm actually risk dying because they aren't given those resources in a timely fashion and aren't given treatment on the spot but are actually on long-ass waiting lines if they can't afford to pay in cash, and sorry to say but most times trans people don't make the money jkr does. with all the money jkr has, she could pay off reassignment surgery for most likely all of the uk's trans people on a waiting list and she'd have extra for another twenty reincarnations. like, idk how to say it anymore but jkr isn't a rando. jkr is the most famous writer alive and googling online how much money she owns it says £820 million. I don't even know what the fuck I'd do with £820 million, because I could live easily with 1 million pounds probably, but the point is that in comparison to any rando and any trans activist, jkr is in a winning position because she's rich, she's virtually untouchable and literally no one is going to harm her and her harmful views will only get her online scorn but no one is gonna stop buying her books, and even if they did she'd still have enough money to survive comfortably until she dies and then I'm pretty sure her family could live comfortably for the next five centuries. the trans people terfism hurts meanwhile could literally be dying because the NHS doesn't process their waiting lists fast enough and she's contributing to that because she supports people who don't care about trans ppl nor want them to have those rights at all;

like anything we could point out wrt what jkr has on her side in this debate doesn't hold up when the point is that she's sitting on 820 million pounds and other ppl might die because - I googled - gender reassignment surgery in the UK costs out of pocket from what the internet says £19,236 per patient, including support as well as surgery. 20k pounds is not cents. and since I'm not that shit at math yet, let's just do a small calculation. let's round out and say with 20k pounds I pay off surgery for one single trans adult in the uk. if I divide jkr's money total by 20k, I get 41k, which means that she could pay off surgery for 41k trans people. I now went on the NHS website after googling 'how many trans people there are in the uk' knowing I'd get most likely a wrong number, and: In 2018/19 around 8,000 people were referred to adult gender dysphoria services in England. 8k people in the whole of england in two years if all of them pays 20k surgery is 160 million pounds, which means that jkr could have paid off all of their surgeries and still have 660 million pounds left which is way more than anyone needs to live comfortably, and instead part of that money goes to terf organizations.... which by the way promote ideologies that also go against the interests of cis women too and, again, any other woman that's not a terf.

I think it's a no brainer. sorry but I'm sure that donald trump also gets a lot of hate mail, or that marine lepen does to stick with women, or that marjorie green whoeverthefuckishername does, and guess what, I wouldn't give a fuck if someone sends hate mail to a woman who says that school shooting massacres are a plot of the left and that 15yo kids gunned down while in class basically asked for it because that's vile and she's in the US senate and gets paid by tax payers and says this shit, so while I'm sympathetic on a human level to getting death threats/rape threats as I got them myself, I have more sympathy for people who actually risk dying and don't most times have the money to pay their way out of it rather than someone who sits on 820 billion pounds and finances people who don't believe trans people have human rights/deserve to get free treatment/to be recognized for what they are and not for what their birth certificate says.

also, everything I said but just said better is in this video here

À mon avis, les gens sont très fatigués, nous le sommes tous, et beaucoup doivent surtout avoir envie de voir les simagrées prendre fin. Comme la plupart d'entre eux ont de toute façon besoin du passe sanitaire pour aller au travail, qu'il sera exigé à l'hôpital (autrement dit, déni de soin pour la première fois depuis la Libération ?) et même à la terrasse des cafés où les travailleurs iraient peut-être faire leur pause déjeuner...

Il y a aussi le résultat de plusieurs années de répression policière. Les Gilets-Jaunes ont été sacrément ébranlés par ce qui était souvent leurs premières expériences de manifestation, et ceux qui envisageaient de les rejoindre ont pris peur. Évidemment, c'était le but recherché, tu vas me dire.

Mais il n'y a pas que ça... Ce n'est pas que le régime macronnien soit ultra-populaire mais la politique de l'angoisse menée contre le peuple pour compenser l'incompétence incroyable des pouvoirs publics, dont je rappelle qu'ils avaient d'abord tenté de cacher l'épidémie avant de déclarer que les masques étaient inutiles, puis qu'on ne confinerait pas, puis qu'on tirerait des leçons de l'épreuve, puis qu'il n'y aurait jamais de passe sanitaire, etc. — tout ça faisant que la Macronnie a opté pour une stratégie de la terreur destinée à faire en sorte que les Français restent chez eux à trembloter en attendant le décompte quotidien des morts de la pandémie pendant que le gouvernement se posait en dernier bastion de la protection médicale alors même que la privatisation de l'Hôpital s'accélérait, qu'on taillait dans le budget, qu'on supprimait des lits... — cette politique de l'angoisse, donc, a eu de sacrés effets.

Pas mal de monde m'a l'air aussi parti du principe qu'il suffit d'attendre 2022 et qu'il n'y aura qu'à voter pour quelqu'un d'autre. L'année précédant les présidentielles, c'est toujours pareil : tout est reporté à l'élection, alors que les candidats sont de toute façon les mêmes et leurs programmes équivalents, sauf ceux qui ne dépasseront jamais le pourcent de votes. Tu as remarqué que les sondages, et les rédactions des grands médias qui nous les fourguent, ont déjà prévu le Grand Duel du second tour entre Macron et Le Pen ? Même s'il y a une part de méthode Coué là-dedans, difficile d'ignorer le cynisme qui l'accompagne.

Et puis, il y a le fait qu'un certain nombre de nos concitoyens pratiquent, eux, la politique de l'autruche quant il s'agit d'examiner les actions du gouvernement. Des gens qui se revendiquent du centre notamment ou qui pensent que Mélenchon est un communiste, et qui auraient hurlé à la dictature sous Sarkozy... Mais pas sous Macron, non. Parce qu'il n'est pas étiqueté à droite officiellement, donc on est forcément à l'abri, vu qu'il n'y a que deux types de totalitarismes possibles, l'un décidé par les « conservateurs » et l'autre par les rejets du bolchevisme...

Un quart ?! Je ne savais pas que c'était à ce point ! (Mais, hm, en terme de vente ou de profit ?…) 

Alors, c’est assez délicat à évaluer, mais la niche se vend de toute façon plus cher que le mainstream (au moins aussi cher, en moyenne, que le haut du panier de la parfumerie courante, type Chanel et Hermès) et sa clientèle est plus régulière, sans doute. N’oublions surtout pas que les marques de niche n’ont pas d’égérie désabusée à rémunérer ni de campagne publicitaire douteuse à financer...

Un article d’initiés publié jadis dans CosmétiqueMag et relayé par AuParfum faisait état en 2012 du lancement de 331 parfums de niche sur 1330 sorties annuelles, le grand historien et spécialiste du parfum Michael Edwards notant à l’époque que le marché de la parfumerie « confidentielle » venait de multiplier par 3 en dix ans. Je pense qu’il a augmenté depuis. L’article d’AuParfum datant de 2014 dénombrait 130 marques à la dernière édition d’Esxence, le salon milanais de la parfumerie de niche ; je viens d’en compter 276 pour celle de 2019.