Also: putting your hand on your heart for the anthem dates to the 2000s. It was started by George W. Bush, who couldn’t remember if he was supposed to do so or not, and to keep him from looking stupid(er) the Republemmings all started doing it and yelling word salad about it being a greater show of patriotism. This was literally one of the things used to discredit John Kerry, and I wish I was joking.
Also, putting your hand on your heart for the pledge didn’t start until after WWII. The salute that was used before that…
Well, let’s just say it fell out of favor for some reason.
LGBT activists have been vocal about intersex issues for several decades, because establishing the legal right to bodily autonomy for intersex persons is basically inseparable from establishing the right of trans persons to that same legal autonomy over their own bodies. many intersex persons prefer not to be grouped together with LGBT causes; however, the vast majority of LGBT activists would agree that performing “corrective” surgery on intersex infants - to force them to adhere to a largely fictional gender binary - is pretty fucking evil.
[Image IDs: a series of tweets from #EndIntersexSurgery (@/ Pidgejen) reading: Anyways, let’s start with what I thought I once knew about myself. When I was 18, I discovered I wasn’t like other girls. My medical records read “male pseudo-hermaphrodite 46 XY” & other BS terminology that pathologized my healthy/beautiful intersex body.
I discovered then that I had been diagnosed with partial androgen insensitivity syndrome (PAIS); my XY body couldn’t fully utilize androgens (like T) and so I developed mostly like a typical female person externally.
For me, this meant I had a somewhat “ambiguous” looking body (aka a non-binary body) and the doctors performed 3 unnecessary cosmetic surgeries to make me look more like a “normal girl”
Not to mention, they lied to me about All Of This and then forced me to take Premarin (a low does of estrogen made from extracting the hormone from a pregnant mare’s urine (horse face emoji, crying face emoji)
Anyways, I got in touch with a new endocrinologist recently thanks to my therapist at @/ RuchMedical who suggested I see him.
He did something no other doctor had ever done. He asked me if he could see my medical records, all of them, and then took time to read of them.
He even reached out to other experts in his field when he was confused by something.
Wow, We love humility in medicine.
Anyways, he ended up suspecting something is up and that perhaps my PAIS diagnosis is wrong.
He then orders me a genetic (dna emoji) test. Thanks to covid it took almost half a year to get the results, but a month or so ago I got them back.
Turns out, I don’t have PAIS. I actually have something else known as NR-5A1. Now this is big news mostly because 1. It supports my thesis that docs who deal with intersex kids don’t know shit…
And 2. P/AIS intersex folks are believed to not be able to utilize androgens and wo we’re often only given estrogen (never T), forcibly “feminized” with fucked up “cosmetic” surgeries, and forcibly assigned female.
Doing what they did to me was fucked up enough, but now realizing that they didn’t even have the diagnosis right—and that I *can* utilize androgens—is fucking infuriated beyond belief.
We need to #EndIntersexSurgery y'all like yesterday. /End IDs]
The brain does not magically mature at 25. Actual neuroscientists note some 8-year-olds even have a greater “maturation index” than 25-year-olds. The myth misunderstands basic neuroscience but is still used for anti-trans policymaking like the Cass Report. https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html
I would really recommend that ppl read “The Mismeasure of Man” for a history of how shaky pseudoscience was often used to confirm social prejudices.
The 25 thing will be remembered alongside the “ape-like features of non-europeans”, “criminal stigmata”, the “missing ounces of the female brain” and the “average american’s mental age of 12” (that time IQ tests were misrepresented as a measure of general intelligence to prove it was impossible to educate the working class.. a patently silly claim now that many countries have near-universal literacy.)
It’s no coincidence that all this stuff is suddenly appearing at a time when younger ppl are kept from meeting typical milestones by a mix of helicopter parenting & a shitty economy
Neuroimaging is in its infancy. Just look at all those reports of “gender differences” that magically disappear with larger sample sizes.
the thing with, “if I stopped showing up/posting/participating in chat/going online, would anyone notice?”
is you have to realize that the only way for you to actually know this information is to ask.
if your goal is to see if anyone is going to reach out, which is not the same as someone noticing your disappearance or being worried about you, you have to be prepared for what happens if nobody reaches out. I am very serious about this. not every friend is going to reach out, and maybe nobody will. maybe they are trying to respect your space and privacy. maybe they think you are mad at them. maybe they are super busy. maybe they were too occupied with their own life to notice. you have literally no way of knowing unless you ask.
what do you plan on doing next if nobody reaches out? because it happened to me. I disappeared for weeks. rough stuff was happening. nobody reached out. I was crushed. I felt so alone. and then I moved on and became a stronger person with a better understanding that feeling bad in silence is the absolute worst way to try to get support from people.
if you want to be reassured by your friends, you have to talk to them. if your friends do not communicate with you in the way you want, you have to talk to them. do not play the disappearing game. nobody is telepathic. nobody can read your mind and guess what you want them to do if you disappear. you have to communicate or everyone fucking loses.
this post pretty much says it all BUT! for people not used to doing this - you have to not only talk to your friends, you have to be direct and clear! you have to say something like, “i need to talk about what’s going on with me” or “I’m having a hard time right now and really need (xyz)”.
it’s crushing to reach out to your friends only to accidentally do it so vaguely or stoically that they don’t catch on you’re asking them for help. avoid doing that to yourself.
recently i tagged a friend to invite him to an exhibition and he declined, saying he was having a horrific mental health patch and that he was currently too mental to go anywhere & some details about mental health services that i won’t go into. so, naturally, i said: hey that sucks ass, i’ve been there, is there anything i can do that will give you some reprieve? would you like distraction or a sympathetic ear or a box of crockery to smash or what? and he really, really helpfully told me what would be useful, which was distracting conversation when he’s alone in the house. so, i thanked him for being able to tell me and for letting me help him.
which i think is the other side of stuff like this. it’s not just “you gotta be able to communicate that you’re doing bad and need help” it’s also you need to be able to work out between you what kind of help you need" and you, the person being reached out to, need to reinforce, positively, that letting you know when shit’s fucked is a good, non-burdensome thing for them to do. that you appreciate being reached out to and asked directly for help. it’s like, it’s a process. you have to keep affirming things. none of us is going to internalise anything from a single incident other than “wow, feels bad man”.
I think that there is also a range of different etiquette in forums, groupchats, servers, etc. that varies depending on the age of their users, the size of the group, and that space’s specific online culture.
To many of the folks I know, in many of the online spaces I know, leaving a chat or a server wouldn’t be considered a cry for help. Sometimes it’s simply considered excusing yourself from the room (which can be a good thing to do if you genuinely need a break). Maybe your absence has been noticed, and your friends have assumed you are busy. Misunderstandings on the internet abound, and unfortunately there is no good substitute for open communication!
If you asked Strong Bad what his pronouns are he’d be like “Alright listen here Blonkus, judging by the cadence of your tone, I’m sure you’re expecting some high-larious answer about how I don’t understand the question, or how I think the "pro” in pronoun stands for “professional” for some reason, or how I think a “pronoun” is some sort of exotic dessert, or something else that implies I HAVEN’T BEEN MOCKING PEOPLE’S GRAMMAR ON THE INTERNET FOR OVER 20 YEARS. You think I don’t know what a pronoun is!? Do better.“ and then refuse to answer the question
Meanwhile if you asked Homestar Runner what his pronouns are he’d be like "Oh hey! Thanks for asking! No, I already ate”
your friends & partners will actually love it if you enforce your boundaries b/c then they will never again need to guess if they’re ever making you uncomfortable & don’t know. healthy living tip :)
i dont care about validity i care about my civil rights
“can you be trans without dysphoria” “can you be an aromantic lesbian” “can bisexuals only date one gender” i literally do not care. in what states and countries are we protected from discrimination.
