Michael Ann, sociotechnical femme

Personally, I'm going to wait until I actually get to watch an episode to decide if I like Starfleet Academy or not

I hope finally this ends all arguments that the Trump administration is not openly engaging in genocidal policy making with the clear intention to wipe out trans people and end trans lives.

I hope it's finally crystal clear to everyone what's happening.

What's wild to me is that the two best games I've ever seen for creating both of our body types are old as hell: Saints Row 3 and Star Trek Online

And again: it's a really good game. I'm deeply into it, having a lot of fun, Deus Ex 1 vibes in the best way. But uh, bonus genital-related dysphoria isn't a "killer feature" for me, quite the opposite.

Like I'm only speaking for me here, but "my character can have genitals that actively make me hella dysphoric" isn't like.... a plus?

Here's part of what's tripping me up: this game has been hailed as "trans-friendly" because of the genital options. But for this particular trans women, all it does is offer representation for the parts of myself that I'm most dysphoric about, and none of the parts that I take euphoric joy in.

All I want is to create characters who kinda look like me, and this generation of games utterly fails at that compared to the previous one. We had the tech for chubby bellies and low-end-of-medium sized boobs in 2015, what happened in the intervening decade?

Also the boob options are wild, ranging from “skinny white girl who does not eat” to “same girl got extremely conservative low-profile implants”

have the developers never seen a woman with body fat in the nude?

I don’t even have particularly big breasts and it’s like why are you making me downsize

The fact there are fat NPCs even main fat NPC's really drives home the bias that heroes aren't allowed to be fat

I like cyberpunk so far but tbh it’s pretty telling that you can do mix and match genitals and body mods but can’t create an even slightly chubby character

Nuanced conversations about privilege are wonderful and incredibly helpful but far too often it's used in regular conversations between marginalized individuals as a punitive tool that actually stops our collective progress towards liberation

Don't be a crab in a bucket

(Sketch is by me)

A THOUSAND TIMES THIS

We constantly use sexuality as an excuse to fight each other, wall ourselves off from other trans women, and create exclusive little domains where behavior starts to border on hostile nationalism.

We MUST stop doing this if we are to have any hope of substantive progress.

My hope is always that people will take that substantive theory and eventually develop formal theory out of it, and I sometimes dip into mid-range theory, but tbh there's not a ton of appetite in Computer Science (my home field, sorta?) for that kind of followup... it's a problem-solving discipline

Yeah, or where the theory is deeply out of touch with the lived reality, as is the case with a lot of trans-related stuff, and especially transfem stuff - my group tends to take a close-in "research *with*" approach that CGT supports really well, and we wind up with substantive theory + applications

I’m really tired of the lack of compassion for trans lesbians I tend to see from other trans women. It really isn’t that hard to be understanding instead of reaching for stereotypes and we should all be trying to do that with each other.

On the one hand: I am very privileged to teach a doctoral seminar in my specialty

On the other hand: omg why didn't I just teach intro HCI???? All the materials are done, assignments perfected...... and I chose...... a whole new class prep???? I curse early fall Michael Ann, she's screwed me again!

TBH constructivist grounded theory is actually my primary methodological approach - but I'm also largely an exploratory researcher trying to crack hard problems around populations we never bother to study. People just do it so very, very wrong a lot of the time, and focus on mechanics over meaning

I am right there with you... I have SO MUCH grading to do, and then.... well..... new course prep for the spring! Ha!

Getting mad about grounded theory is one of my favorite pastimes, I can't lie about that

Contrarianism isn't a sexual orientation OR a gender, stop trying to practice it as one.

Did you know that it's possible to defend your own way of being without putting down others? Like, you should probably have some arguments for why your way of being is important to you that don't 100% depend on denigrating other ways of being, or what the hell are you even doing.

THIS GOES IN BOTH/ALL DIRECTIONS

Jesus Christ some of y'all really see defense of your whole deal as an invitation to shit on other folks whole deal, and it's... well, it's disgusting, honestly.

Being shitty to people over their sexuality remains unacceptable.

On the one hand, for the first time ever, my doctoral alma mater isn't bombarding me with calls and emails about sending them money to top off their $11 billion endowment, which is great.

On the other hand, it's because they signed an agreement that betrays every single value they have.

So.

Billionaires are going to burn the entire world to the ground because we wouldn't say they were cool and laugh at their jokes, and I think this is a very good example of why they shouldn't be allowed to exist for any reason.

Let me fix the deadly problems and then you can get back to ruining each others lives over minute disagreements about gender, I promise.

Consider, for a moment, that trans people... are more... than their genders.

I know, I know, it's scary, shhhhh shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's okay.

Finding: "trans people are literally being put into deadly situations because of this technical issue, but there's actually a pretty clear path towards fixing it"

Commentary: "but what of IDENTITY? what of GENDER?"

The only way to rise to the challenge of the current crisis is to write your magnum opus, "Gender: It's About Me, Not You, You Do It Differently Than Me So You're Probably A Fed"

The most important thing to do during an active attempt at the administrative genocide of trans people is to write more posts and papers that ask the all important questions "what IS gender, and why is my rival doing it all wrong?"