Lia

If you can't compute the harm of denying people expertise about their own lives, which is something that you theorize perfectly well about *your* group, is also a thing for other groups, I don't know what to tell you.
I am literally too old for this and I'm not even 35. For crying out loud.

The worst part is, I try to have a good faith convo *about having good faith convos*, despite signs of bad faith, and every single fucking time it ends up with someone laughing in my face and trying to sic followers on me when I suggest that stuff I HAVE SEEN WITH MY OWN FUCKING EYES exists

Hey do they mention the "unstable contracts mostly for women" and "juniors who can't demand better working conditions" tricks? Execs LOVE those

What I *wish*, which is not fucking tone policing, is that "Hey, this is also routinely used to hurt me and trans people like me, could you not?" was audible. Clearly it is not.
Am I allowed to think that sucks? Or is that, somehow, bigotry on my part? Do I stop being trans if I run out of grace?

It is not a "correct" descriptor, as you've said yourself. It is a snappy, convenient one you say I should not tone police, that's different. What I am saying is that due to this other usage *by bigots who notably despise trans people who aren't trans women*, assuming good faith can be difficult!

Yep, it has a double usage! I've seen both, the shitheads you talk about (and yes, plenty of trans men in that group, I'd argue the worst I've met ARE trans men, there's one I need to ding next time I see him 'cause he called me AFAB twice and just, no, ew) AND I've seen the use as an insult

And so I am a petty bitch in private, as god intended, where we don't need piles of credentials disclaimer 'cause we'll see each other in two weeks to keep doing the work anyway including by redirecting to people we can't stand because they're COMMUNISTS, can you imagine? The audacity

I feel like social media encourages a form of theory that's closer to doxa than a toolkit you grab stuff from. A shared language, from jargon to memes, detached from complex realities. Mixing up the private and the public, failing to navigate the etiquette of expressing anger versus splash damage

I deeply believe that "hurt people hurt people" is a major culprit of trans intra-community fuckery. I am committed to it at least ending with *me*, which is why I eat shit and block liberally and strive to have conversations.
I think I'm still allowed to be upset and express upset at eating shit

Yep, and sometimes the context clues are "you annoying non-binary gendervoids are why we're losing legal ground" and/or "usage of transmascs and trans men like that's the same", "non-transitioning" to mean "no HRT", or similar! At which point I think it is not be absurd to assume bad faith at times

I'm a programmer, I eat shit for a living, you're not gonna get me and I do not owe any of you my Activism Resume to prove that I'm not a bigot (if only because none of it actually means I'm not, that's not how it works) but dear GOD the discourse does get old

The sheer number of bitchy takes I'm holding in because contrary to what some randos seem to want to think I'm capable of accounting for harm and biting my tongue when I get verbally slapped and get words put in my mouth again and again, I swear

Didn't say that. Like, I personally wish people would stop 'cause it hurts me and people I care about (who aren't the aforementioned self-regendering jerks, we hate being regendered in fact, shocker). My point is that due to the double usage, the presence of it makes it harder to assume good faith

And I think the line between theory and informal conversation is blurry! Combined with social media dynamics and character limits - the theory gets built live despite/via the constraints of the platform. I believe in arguing about those problems as a part of the process

Nah, that was trying to think through what to call it if not a slur - because it gets deployed as an insult, at the very least, on the regular.
I don't have a good alternative because I am a code monkey attempting to do what good work I can on the ground, much more than a theorist

I'm not going to break down the situation and its players in detail so an internet stranger who's been putting words in my mouth can give me morality cookies. You might want to do some self-examining yourself.
We're done here

For cat trees / scratching posts we swore by the Danish brand Kattens No1 which is modular, meaning that when the overenthusiastic floof pierces through one module you can just swap it out and keep the base / plush platforms etc. Dunno if there's a French retailer tho!

I... don't have that expectation. Where the fuck did I write that?
Again, bad faith reads are a problem here and it works in more than one direction! Attempting to explain something that I've seen again and again and again, which is not a simple GG-style mob, is not the same as excusing

So far it's resulted in me being low-key considered a pest by most of the local community, got me slurred as quote a "transmisogynistic TERF theyfab" for telling a trans woman "If you're coughing indoors put on a mask thanks" (as-is), but after 3 years of that I think we're almost getting somewhere

Yep, as I've said! Not your job, very much my job because near-any of those who's not a full-blown raging MRA (who we just don't see in mixed trans support spaces, they think they're too good for that) I will run into in said spaces and need to thwack. Helps the aim if I understand them some

PSA: a lot of people asked for an ebook edition — and we’ve been able to put one together! And with hyperlinks, of course.

TBH de facto it's 90% white transmascs on this fucking cursed beat and it pisses me off. None of us *want* that, far as I can tell we're not doing anything actively keeping transfem people / people of color out, it's just One More Thing that nobody has bandwidth for. I hate it. Working on it anyway

Yeah, the part that fucks me is the anti-covid / disability justice work because the pickings are *painfully* slim. But also I don't go trawling through people's accounts, so all I hear are slippery bleh takes, never full-throated horror. And that's often enough for shitty replies to happen!

If you see "I think this is part of why this happens so often, and this is how I work locally at fixing it in the longer run" as a defense I think you might want to revisit the part about reading things in good faith

My commitment to trans/feminism is that I help trans people even when they have bad politics in some areas, trying to nudge more or less hard them to better politics. I deal with the resulting complexity to create safe-ish spaces again and again and again. It sucks! I hate it! It still needs doing

Then what is your darn point? I used "productive ways to smack them upside the head" above, explain to me how that is "coddling". Do I kick them out of the trans support meetup instead of checking them when they say some shit?

(Most of those people aren't men but that gets erased in those convos, speaking of "feelings that don't get coddled")
My point is that people aren't one-dimensional. When all we see from some jerk is shitty replies on social media, we don't see the whole picture: people are good and bad at once

Right? That is my problem with them: not the gender, not the birth assignment, but their shitty politics that cannot and more importantly should not be rules-lawyered! So I don't like calling them theyfabs. That muddles the actual issue

I wish it was that simple. Either they've got good politics on some stuff (notably covid work, which I'm sorry to say the local transfem collective is lagging HARD on) but get dragged into online arguments as a form of digital self-harm. Or they're Literal Babies(TM) and there's hope yet to fix it

Oh what I mean here is the goddamn kids at the local trans support meetup, and local transmasc friends who need a channel for the pain that's not fucking Twitter (yeah French leftists are still on there it's embarrassing). I can see them slipping due to that unaddressed pain, it has *nowhere* to go