Obligatory Tumblr Account

From here on in, I'm referring to womyn who were CAMAB as simply womyn, and those who were CAFAB and 'identify' as female as ciswomen. I do this in the interests of cultural feminism, and so that ciswomen can know what it's like for a tenth of a second to have a womon say, "you are not my sister. You did not go through what I went through and never will understand." Girlhood is significant, and is forever tainted by cissexually-constructed wannabes.

wthsjw:

valeriekeefe:

wthsjw:

valeriekeefe:

wthsjw:

lookatthisfuckingcisgender:

sugoibroandkawaiijeff:

im not even sorry but saying you hate cis people is like saying you hate breathing.

no see the key difference is that breathing keeps us alive while cis people do literally the opposite

Um… Miss Keef, am I to understand from this reblog that you echo the previous commenter’s sentiments?

You’re missing an e in my name, and yes, so long as transition medicine is artificially gatekept, workplace discrimination persists, and walking-while-trans is a crime, the net effect of the existence of cis people is to reduce the life-expectancy of trans people. That was the relevant point I was reblogging.

Whoops, typo.

Anyway, I think LookAtThisFuckingCisGender—and by extension, you—might be a little too vehement with your point. I agree that trans people need greater protection from discrimination and access to transitional medicine, but the fact remains that straight people far outnumber trans. I fail to see how hating straight people—a demographic which often contains friends and family members of trans individuals—for the bigotry of some straight people helps anyone.

I also take exception to the suggestion that my mere existence is somehow doing someone harm.

Yeahhhhhhh, if you can’t tell the difference between straight and cis, you probably should be taking some prerequisite courses before trying to play at this level.

And it’s not you personally, it’s you in aggregate, much like when a criticism of feminists is levied, it’s not singling out every single feminist, (me included) just a hegemonic tendency.

Really? Because I’ve only ever heard the pronoun “cis” on Tumblr, and it always seemed to me to be talking about straight people. By all means, if you find my ignorant, enlighten me.

Well, while I’m sorry that your introduction to an excellent non-normative descriptor was through the often festering-identity-left-shithole more commonly known as tumblr, instead of, say, Julia Serano’s excellent book Whipping Girl, cis refers to the relationship between one’s identified and assigned sexes being the same. John Waters is cis. The President is cis. Rachel Maddow is cis (though I don’t imagine you’ll catch her using the word anytime soon unlike Melissa Harris-Perry, who is also cis). You can be cis and gay or bi or any other flavour of aheterosexuality out there, just as I’m trans and a lesbian… all at the same time.

Now, current best evidence leads us to believe that the majority of cis people are straight, this is true (and interestingly, not true in the trans community, where slightly less than a quarter of trans people are attracted to people of the opposite [identified] sex), and straight cis people are, through the confluence of heteronormativity and cisnormativity, the presumed societal default, (hence frequent useage of cis-het in compound or two-word form, though I find it’s often in use by people who have internalized arguments that somehow if they’re one kind of queer, they can’t hate another kind, and I’ve seen too many heterosexist trans people and way too many cissexist cisGLB folk to believe that for a second) this does not mean that to be cis is to be straight.

Hope that helped.

harrow-adrift:

privilegedenyingfeministcunt:

A teacher of mine told a story about how she assaulted an ex of hers after finding out that he had gotten together with an ex of a friend of hers (she dumped him, for the record).

She broke down the door to his apartment, broke his nose, knocked him back into some metal boxes where his ear was sliced open, threw a porcelain statue at her ex’s new girlfriend, and set his sheets on fire.

Most of my class cheered, the biggest positive reaction coming from one of the two hardcore feminists in the class.

My teacher later mentioned that when the cops arrived and asked her ex if she had assaulted him, he denied it. My feminist classmate’s reaction? “It’s the least he could do.”

The “least he could do” was try and let her get away with breaking and entering, assault and battery, destruction of private property, and arson?

There’s no doubt that a guy sharing a similar story about attacking his ex and her new boyfriend would be crucified on the spot.

It makes me sad to know that many people don’t even bat an eyelash at blatantly obvious double standards like this.

Think it’s hard for a female victims to get taken seriously? Well, it is… but god help you if you’re a man.

“You’re a guy, didn’t you enjoy it?”

“Time to nut up, dude.”

image

“Because of our misogynist society, it’s just not the same when a man is sexually assaulted.”

“But almost all victims are women!”

image

“It’s because a women is defending herself from her abusive partner.”

image

“It’s just the patriarchy backfiring…”

image

It’s amazing how some of these could come out of the mouths of a unidirectional feminist or a traditional sexist, especially once you strip away the feminist jargon.

bushgsa:

jenyockney:

A little UK bi history timeline from “Getting Bi in a Gay / Straight World”, which you can get as real live inky bi booklet from BiPhoria

Always good to take a look at important people and places: as for me, I’m surprised Torchwood was the first UK television show to normalize bisexuality. 

I am going to say that mentioning Sappho in this list is quite possibly erasure of a trans lesbian, and also that leaving out John Maynard Keynes is a travesty.

(via harrow-adrift)

Exercise doesn't help depression, study concludes

askouija:

grumpchump:

sailor-ramiel:

atrocementheatral:

unfertig:

persiflet:

missvoltairine:

tooyoungforthelivingdead:

A study into whether physical activity alleviates the symptoms of depression has found there is no benefit.

Research published in the British Medical Journal suggests that adding a physical activity intervention to usual care did not reduce symptoms of depression more than usual care alone.

This contrasts with current clinical guidance which recommends exercise to help those suffering from the mental illness, which affects one in six adults in Britain at any one time.

I thought this was true and all - fuck yeah, randomised controlled trials!

i’m waiting for the study that proves that yoga at sunrise actually makes depression worse

What.

i don’t know how to feel

Well

*prints out 283470368 copies of article, tapes one to the forehead each adult in my life from middle school until now*

[STARTS SCREAMING LOUDLY AND DOESN’T EVER STOP]

try telling my mom just try

ananiujitha: fuckyeahfeminists: Costco CEO Craig Jelinek supports raising the minimum wage. Costco announced record profits today, averaging $10,000 in profit per employee compared to $7,400 at Walmart. The secret to Costco’s success is paying employees well, providing benefits, and giving them an opportunity to unionize. So large corporations’ excuses that treating & paying workers well would damage profits are all a crock of shit. Is it a defection issue? Do the rich see someone offering higher wages and getting higher profits as ‘selling out’ their class interests? Do the rich value their class interests more than human interests? This really puzzles me. There’s a certain income threshold one passes where most of your competition for goods is for status goods, most of your additional utility is derived by showing you have more than other people. When income stratification is reduced, the utility from having status goods is decreased, because some others will now be able to make the choice to purchase similar status goods.

ananiujitha:

fuckyeahfeminists:

Costco CEO Craig Jelinek supports raising the minimum wage.

Costco announced record profits today, averaging $10,000 in profit per employee compared to $7,400 at Walmart. 
The secret to Costco’s success is paying employees well, providing benefits, and giving them an opportunity to unionize.

So large corporations’ excuses that treating & paying workers well would damage profits are all a crock of shit.

Is it a defection issue? Do the rich see someone offering higher wages and getting higher profits as ‘selling out’ their class interests? Do the rich value their class interests more than human interests? This really puzzles me.

There’s a certain income threshold one passes where most of your competition for goods is for status goods, most of your additional utility is derived by showing you have more than other people. When income stratification is reduced, the utility from having status goods is decreased, because some others will now be able to make the choice to purchase similar status goods.

(Source: facebook.com)

Taking Apart Common Trans Statistics

sosungalittleclodofclay:

valeriekeefe:

tobitastic:

nilsander:

mattachinereview:

TW: suicide, outing

 

Trigger warning for transmisogyny, suicide, murder.

“I’ve heard that one in seven trans women will be murdered.”

I don’t know what to do.

Notice: Some cold number crunching of around death.

This came from Anna Anthropy’s open letter that you should go read if you haven’t.  But I want to take apart that statistic because I don’t believe it.

The Trans Murder Monitoring Project shows <200 murders most years, but some years are higher, such as last year which was 265.

I would guess it is calculated based on a really old and biased estimate of the number of trans women in the population that estimated 1 in 30,000 folks assigned male get surgery - or 116,000 trans women world wide (side note: they estimated 1 in 300,000 for trans men, for a worldwide population of 11,600).  That number was based only on how many SRS surgeries were performed in the 80s. It didn’t count trans men, the folks the gatekeepers kept from getting surgeries, the folks who knew they’d never pass the gatekeepers and didn’t try, the folks who couldn’t afford it, the folks who didn’t want surgery, etc.  

Oversimplifying the math, we can take that *incorrect* population estimate along with the worldwide life expectancy of 68 years, and do the math (~200 murders per year * 68 years / 116,000 trans women) to get roughly 1 in 9 trans women murdered in her lifetime - so that’s probably more or less where these numbers came from

The current best estimate we have is from Lynn Conway, 1 in 500 or potentially even 1 in 250. That gives us a much larger estimate of the world population and drastically changes.  If we run those numbers again with this new estimate, it’s becomes just about 1 or 2 out of 1000.  

That’s still high, but a totally different magnitude.  When I think of the online group of ~500 trans women I just joined, the original number would have me expect 71 of us will be murdered.  With this adjusted number,   I might expect one of us would murdered, but there’s a decent chance none of us would be.  Still scary, still above average, but not quite as wild as some of the numbers being tossed around.

Of course, I can’t crunch these numbers without mentioning how this isn’t an even distribution of risk for all trans women.  Nearly 2 out of 3 trans murders recorded last year took place in Brazil.  No matter the geographic region, the vast majority are trans women of color.  And sex workers, immigrants, and/or homeless trans women make up a significant portion of the numbers.  White trans women who don’t do sex work, (especially if they are middle class, not immigrants, and living in the western world) bear very little of the risk.

And of course, please don’t begin citing my above estimate as the new “real” number. There are so many false assumptions in it and I highly doubt the official way to calculate lifetime risk is just by multiplying an annual rate by the average life expectancy.  And I used worldwide average life expectancy, not trans women’s life expectancy.  And I assumed that 0% of the trans murders were trans men - err, okay, while that last one isn’t true it probably is close enough not to mess with the numbers too bad.

I should mention that a Massachusetts study found a prevalence of transition of 1 in 200, based on random phone interviews instead of counting doctor visits or paperwork changes or anything else with significant selection bias. Also Conway found an avowed prevalence (transitioned or would like to but hasn’t for whatever reason) of 1 in 100. It’s also worth noting what happened to avowed cisGLB prevalence in the last 32 years, in the US, as being cis and gay went from de-facto criminal to largely tolerated.

or: the looser the gender/sex roles get, the more people are willing to admit how much they don’t fit the standard cishet model.

Lowering barriers to entry increases prevalence, yes, this was my point, but let’s not forget for every queer person, usually the first person they have to come out to is themselves. A heterosexist society will have a lower prevalence of aheterosexual acts because more people will repress their aheterosexuality. A cissexist society will have a lower prevalence of transition…

If anyone could walk into a General Practitioner’s, say “I’m trans, I’d like HRT to combat my gender dysphoria,” and be 99.9% sure that they’d walk out with a prescription and a fact-sheet about possible side-effects, I’d have a lot easier time finding a date.

It’s true that greater acceptance brings greater expression, much like the presence of a Starbucks is found to actually lead to more independent coffee shops in the same area.

theironduchess:

Is it possible for communism/fascism and democracy to co-exist?

Like for instance, a certain party’s ideology is Communistic/Nationalistic, but the government is elected (i.e., voted in by the people), and so even if the Communist/Nationalist Party is voted in they’ll still have to GTFO once their term is over and aren’t re-elected.

The only examples I can think of are

  1. the recent French presidential elections, in which the elected president is from the Socialist Party, and hasn’t turned France into Soviet Russia yet
  2. the British National Party, which stands for elections instead of setting 10 Downing Street on fire :3

Winning the election isn’t the test. Submitting to free-and-fair competitive elections after having won the election is the test, and fascists have been terrible at that. Communists have been really bad at that, but not quite as terrible as the fascists.

Taking Apart Common Trans Statistics

tobitastic:

nilsander:

mattachinereview:

TW: suicide, outing

 

Trigger warning for transmisogyny, suicide, murder.

“I’ve heard that one in seven trans women will be murdered.”

I don’t know what to do.

Notice: Some cold number crunching of around death.

This came from Anna Anthropy’s open letter that you should go read if you haven’t.  But I want to take apart that statistic because I don’t believe it.

The Trans Murder Monitoring Project shows <200 murders most years, but some years are higher, such as last year which was 265.

I would guess it is calculated based on a really old and biased estimate of the number of trans women in the population that estimated 1 in 30,000 folks assigned male get surgery - or 116,000 trans women world wide (side note: they estimated 1 in 300,000 for trans men, for a worldwide population of 11,600).  That number was based only on how many SRS surgeries were performed in the 80s. It didn’t count trans men, the folks the gatekeepers kept from getting surgeries, the folks who knew they’d never pass the gatekeepers and didn’t try, the folks who couldn’t afford it, the folks who didn’t want surgery, etc.  

Oversimplifying the math, we can take that *incorrect* population estimate along with the worldwide life expectancy of 68 years, and do the math (~200 murders per year * 68 years / 116,000 trans women) to get roughly 1 in 9 trans women murdered in her lifetime - so that’s probably more or less where these numbers came from

The current best estimate we have is from Lynn Conway, 1 in 500 or potentially even 1 in 250. That gives us a much larger estimate of the world population and drastically changes.  If we run those numbers again with this new estimate, it’s becomes just about 1 or 2 out of 1000.  

That’s still high, but a totally different magnitude.  When I think of the online group of ~500 trans women I just joined, the original number would have me expect 71 of us will be murdered.  With this adjusted number,   I might expect one of us would murdered, but there’s a decent chance none of us would be.  Still scary, still above average, but not quite as wild as some of the numbers being tossed around.

Of course, I can’t crunch these numbers without mentioning how this isn’t an even distribution of risk for all trans women.  Nearly 2 out of 3 trans murders recorded last year took place in Brazil.  No matter the geographic region, the vast majority are trans women of color.  And sex workers, immigrants, and/or homeless trans women make up a significant portion of the numbers.  White trans women who don’t do sex work, (especially if they are middle class, not immigrants, and living in the western world) bear very little of the risk.

And of course, please don’t begin citing my above estimate as the new “real” number. There are so many false assumptions in it and I highly doubt the official way to calculate lifetime risk is just by multiplying an annual rate by the average life expectancy.  And I used worldwide average life expectancy, not trans women’s life expectancy.  And I assumed that 0% of the trans murders were trans men - err, okay, while that last one isn’t true it probably is close enough not to mess with the numbers too bad.

I should mention that a Massachusetts study found a prevalence of transition of 1 in 200, based on random phone interviews instead of counting doctor visits or paperwork changes or anything else with significant selection bias. Also Conway found an avowed prevalence (transitioned or would like to but hasn’t for whatever reason) of 1 in 100. It’s also worth noting what happened to avowed cisGLB prevalence in the last 32 years, in the US, as being cis and gay went from de-facto criminal to largely tolerated.