Wolfgirl, but puppy

There were several autistic kids at my school. Their autistic traits, like stimming and echolalia, often got them bullied by allistic kids. The bullying was horrific, but there was something of a support system in place - teachers and some of the nicer kids would sometimes intervene to stop the bullying, saying, "Don't be mean, they can't help it, they're autistic." There were clubs where the autistic kids could hang out together without the pressure of allistic kids watching them. It absolutely sucked to be autistic then, but there was a modicum of support.

I also displayed all the same autistic traits, but I didn't have a diagnosis. I didn't even know a diagnosis was something I could get. Nonetheless, if I had known, there was no way my mother would've allowed me to get a diagnosis - she was always emphasising how "normal" I was, not as a statement of fact but as a kind of incantation, a spell that would make me be normal if she said it. The way she talked about my autistic cousin made it clear that she wouldn't countenance having an autistic child.

I grew up in a world where autism wasn't something you could just have, rather it was something a doctor assigned to you. You could flap your hands when stressed and look at the ground when talking and cry whenever a police siren went past, but whether that was "autism" or "being a weirdo" depended entirely on whether you had a piece of paper from a doctor with the magic words on it. That paper granted you access to what limited support existed, and without it you were left with nothing, just being bullied constantly with no defenders at all. Even the subset of teachers who defended autistic kids would bully "allistic" kids with exactly the same behaviours.

When I discovered I was autistic at the age of 30, I felt really relieved to have an explanation for so much of my personality. But I also felt resentful that I had been left for so long blaming myself for things like social exclusion when that social exclusion was really ableist bullying, something that others had a duty not to do to me. It wasn't me who kept fucking up, it was everyone else who kept failing me time and time again.

I was autistic the whole time, the fact that I (and everyone around me) thought I was allistic only made my life harder, by denying me access to support and self-understanding.

I spent the first 26 years of my life assuming I was a man. For almost all that time, the possibility that I might be a woman was not even one I considered. I had female friends and family members, and often I got on better with those people than I did with men, but for some reason the idea that I could be a woman too just wasn't one that crossed my mind.

There were several girls at my school. Being girls, they often got bullied by the boys. The bullying was horrific, but there was something of a support system in place - teachers and some of the nicer boys would sometimes intervene to stop the bullying, saying, "Leave the girls alone." There were places where girls could hang out together without the pressure of boys watching them. It absolutely sucked to be a girl, but there was a modicum of support.

I also displayed all the same behaviours the girls did, but I didn't have the right birth certificate. I didn't even know a girl was something I could be. Nonetheless, if I had known, there was no way my mother would've allowed me to be a girl - she was always emphasising how "masculine" I was, not as a statement of fact but as a kind of incantation, a spell that would make me be masculine if she said it. The way she talked about my girl cousins made it clear that she wouldn't be happy with a daughter rather than a son.

I grew up in a world where gender wasn't something you could just have, rather it was something a doctor assigned to you. You could be the most feminine kid imaginable, but whether that was "girl" or "f-slur" depended entirely on whether you had a piece of paper from a doctor with the magic words on it. That paper granted you access to what limited support existed, and without it you were left with nothing, just being bullied constantly with no defenders at all. Even the teachers who defended girls would bully "boys" with exactly the same behaviours.

When I discovered I was not a man at the age of 26, I felt really relieved to have an explanation for so much of my personality. But I also felt resentful that I had been left for so long blaming myself for things like social exclusion when that social exclusion was really misogynistic bullying, something that others had a duty not to do to me. It wasn't me who kept fucking up, it was everyone else who kept failing me time and time again.

I was a girl the whole time, the fact that I (and everyone around me) thought I was a boy only made my life harder, by denying me access to support and self-understanding.

There are real labor problems here. Base pay is often insulting. Customer tips carry too much of the burden. Workers need better protections, more transparent algorithms, protection from arbitrary deactivation, and actual recourse when the app or a customer screws them over. Car-dependent delivery is also an environmental and infrastructural problem, though in a denser city I’d still be doing this work; I’d just be doing it by bike.

But when people talk about delivery work, I rarely see them talk to actual delivery workers. I see a lot of abstract arguments about convenience, consumer decadence, “hustle culture,” and internalized neoliberalism. Meanwhile, when I’m out working and waiting in restaurants for orders, the other Dashers I meet are usually people who only speak Spanish, people who read as neurodivergent, visibly physically disabled people, or some combination of the above.

I have not met this mythical Disco Elysium poor ultraliberal hustlegrinder-wannabe people seem to be arguing with. Maybe that archetype exists somewhere. If it exists among any kind of gig worker, it would probably be rideshare drivers. But most of what I see looks less like “rise and grind” and more like “this is one of the few forms of work available to people who need flexibility, low barriers to entry, limited managerial surveillance, or a way to work around language barriers, disability, burnout, chronic illnesses and injuries with symptoms that come and go unpredictably, caregiving, résumé gaps, or discrimination.”

That does not make the current system good. It means the current system is filling a real gap that a lot of supposedly better systems do not even acknowledge.

As a disabled person who is burnout-prone and demand-sensitive, contracting as a delivery driver has given me an unprecedented level of financial flexibility. I can work when I have capacity. I can stop when I’m deteriorating. I can build my day around my actual body instead of being trapped under a manager who thinks “reliable” means “able to perform the same way every day no matter what.” That matters. It does not cancel out the exploitation, but it is also not fake just because it is politically inconvenient.

And delivery itself is not some inherently decadent evil. Sometimes people live alone. Sometimes they are sick. Sometimes they are disabled, exhausted, overwhelmed, grieving, overloaded, or recovering from something else - perhaps the stress and fatigue induced by their own job. Sometimes they need medicine, groceries, or a meal that will actually unplug their sinuses instead of whatever generic community-care slop someone thinks they should be grateful for. Humans are allowed to need specificity. “Food” is not the same as “the food I can actually eat right now.”

A serious labor critique would ask how to make delivery work safer, better-paid, less tip-dependent, less car-dependent, less algorithmically punitive, and less precarious. It would ask what kinds of flexible, accessible work should exist for people who cannot thrive in conventional employment. It would ask how cities could support bike delivery, worker cooperatives, public infrastructure, and real protections without simply replacing one bad system with a moral sermon about how nobody should ever want takeout.

But a lot of the discourse does not do that. It treats convenience itself as suspicious. It treats wanting flexible work as false consciousness. It treats the needs of disabled people, immigrants, and other people who can't fit into traditional employment structures as details to be swept aside in favor of a cleaner political image.

And no matter how gently this is pointed out, the newbie will often initially feel instinctively defensive towards what they perceive as scolding. Which means that when another community member comes along and says "Don't worry about the language police 🙄, many of us think AGAB language is fine, it's a useful way to refer to the kind of formative experiences you had as a child," the newbie will latch on to them like a life raft.

And yes, we live in a transphobic society, a lot of people coming into the trans community will have uninterrogated transphobic views, but that just makes them more vulnerable when there is always someone in the community willing to tell them "no, your transphobic views are fine actually, and in fact here are some more you might not have thought of!"

It means a sizeable chunk of newly-out NBs are swiftly radicalised into increasingly extreme transphobia and transmisogyny simply as a defense mechanism against having their own comments criticised. One day they're just happy to join a community where people supposedly don't judge you on your birth sex, and the next they're talking about the importance of "AGAB socialisation".

Don't you want to feel rope burn on your wrists? on your ankles? Don't you want the base of your neck to be a little purple?

Don't you want bruises on your thighs from having them forced apart? Don't you want to be unable to sit after repeated blows? Don't you want your body and mind to ache with sensation and revelry?

Oh would you believe the gasps each time. I love how disorienting it must be for the little thing

Rhetorical dogwhistles are things that most people would not be able to identify as bigoted because they're INTENDED to have plausible deniability.

The wording changes are meant to be subtle enough that people really can mix them up accidentally when they don't have much information!

So when the gender critical movement calls trans women "transwomen", they're hoping for 2 things.

this usage will spread enough among people who don't know any better, to give transphobes the plausible deniability of not LOOKING like a frothing bigot constantly.

the usage grammatically places trans women in a different category than other women; it's changing "trans" from an adjective to part of a noun to make this distinction.

The more we can avoid this usage, the less deniability have transmisogynists have when using it, and the less we are helping their cause.