So… You’re leaving then and going cold turkey?

You are living during the time of masculine emancipation my friend. Men are allowed to be cute af these days and more and more women are catching on that this is a good thing. Some of the guys I know who register this way have found a lot of success dating in the non-binary scene where gender expectations are more generally negotiable. Non-binary circles are encircled with exterior connections of cis communities who have a more dynamic understanding of gender so if you are in a market to find likeminded souls that’s where I would look.

And also… Cute is sexy. It’s not everyone’s vibe but there’s definitely a desire out there for true gentlemen emphasis on the gentle. Most of the cis ones I know are married to ride or die partners whom exude an aura of sweetness out to 20ft.

It’s less about giving money to the woman herself and more about how HP and JK Rowling are used as memetic weapons. Every release of a new property has seen a rush of transphobic actors invading trans spaces for years. Invoking the name of the author and showing solidarity in a lot of contexts is a not subtle way of showing support to the veiws expressed by the Terf ideology during a time when being trans is becoming criminalized in more places. The news isn’t generally covering it well but Texas is passing laws where it is a criminal offense to misrepresent your birth sex at work or in public government spaces.

“Oh but it’s just money” isn’t so much the problem. It’s the cover this entire conversation about ethical consumption or the lack thereof in daily life is providing to people throwing up open flags of anti-trans bigotry in public and using that as a tool to band together to attack the community and send open messages that trans people are not welcome in ways that the average cis person will dismiss as just “they like kid wizards”.

It isn’t for “no real effect”. Harry Potter is a merchandise empire and it’s important to see how that empire is being utilized. Open fan support of Harry Potter is often used as a direct open signal of anti-trans support and Terf ideology. Here in Vancouver where we have a larger than average population of trans and non-binary folk and more open accommodation to the community a billboard was put up saying “I❤️ JK Rowling” downtown because it’s a more nebulous dogwhistle that wouldn’t immediately ping Canada’s hate speech laws so that the whole “Freedom of Speech” ploy could be envoked.

Whenever a new HP franchise item comes out there’s a wave of people who flood online and sometimes in person trans spaces who use the barest veneer of support of the franchise as a means to say some truely awful things about trans people. Some don’t even bother mentioning the franchise they just participate in the storming because they have the opportunity. Those spaces are often filled with vulnerable people seeking support and solidarity and these rushes can leave isolated trans people without community for weeks.

Here in Van someone wearing HP merch in any queer space is throwing up a flag that says “I am potentially an unsafe person.”

Article of the billboard.

http://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5722244

You don’t have to give up your books. All we ask is that people do not white knight the author or the publication and merchandising empire which keeps making her influence into an active memetic weapon.

It’s not Canada or Denmark which will suffer the most from-it, but US themselves

I get what you are saying but at the same time as a Canadian that comes across as more American-centric myopia.

We are a small country in terms of people with only nominally more people than the state of California spread out over a landmass 1.6% larger than the US. Our energy infrastructure doesn’t fully connect through our own country and due to American strong arming a lot of our manufacturing industry is not super robust. It’s the Goose next to the Eagle. We’re tough enough to defend ourselves and make it hurt to attack us but we aren’t getting anything out of this fight. For us it’s a fight for our lives not a fight we can profit off of. Whatever wounds we take in this fight will soften us up for the regular problems we fight. The forest fires that have become exponentially worse through climate change that have erased entire cities off our map. The healthcare crisis of a mass of retiring boomers needing more care in a system that has constantly under fire from Americanizing rhetoric that has caused disinvestment from an ethically better system. The protectionist rhetoric that comes with conflict which will erode the systems of government and create legal precedent for more autocratic means of operation that will need to be later undone. The pausing of reconciliation efforts with indigenous nations. This conflict, even as it is now, will cause real trackable losses of life and livelihood some of which will not come back.

Our existence and future as a sovereign nation is threatened but nope “The US will be the real victims of this”? Bloody fucking tonedeaf mate.

I think the point being made is that often women are called upon to do emotional labour by men who are often only acquaintances who look at them as resources that should be on the cultural hook to dispense emotional intimacy. A lot of women are fed up with the gendered nature of that expectation because you have a lot of men taking of that resource but not seeing it as being something they should actively be doing too and that their lack of reciprocation and participation in that space is a problem.

The fact that cultural norms prevent men from seeking solace from other men is a problem not just because it’s root lies in a lot of homophobia but because it creates both a category of gendered work for women and isolates men from their peers. Women are often pressured into that role which means if they don’t want to perform that function for any reason they can meet resistance as that emotional intimacy can be treated or assumed as being mandatory.

Nor is it a good idea to lay all your problems at the feet of an intimate partner regardless of gender. They have a lot of investment in you generally and it is easier to talk with them but they are generally ill equipped to shoulder all of your problems because they lack emotional distance to set you right if you are going astray. They often have other investments in you as well which means they cannot always tell it to you straight because if you disagree or react poorly they might lose you or jeopardize life goals and plans.

Being approachable and available to provide support should be a genderless issue with neither automatic expectation of providing or expected coldness laid at the feet of anyone.

I think they want to expunge groups because a monoculture is easier to control. If everyone fits into a couple of narrow boxes that all speak the same language, fulfill the same roles, have the same hard limits on expression and are all able-bodied, mentally tuned to function as desirable cogs in a machine you get an easily exploitable force. It’s why they want all costs of maintenance and risk borne by the individual and more specifically the family unit which has the power to ostricize and disenfranchise on a micro scale. Pluralistic societies mean that the individual is supported by a culture of acceptance and those groups all run off of different rules which make demands of society. They want a society that makes very few demands but feels catered to thus earning higher levels of compliance.

Are you talking about the NATO shortfall? Because the Canadian government has a number of places where it is scrambling to find budget for a lot of things. Consider

• An expanded commitment to rehoming and financially supporting refugees from Ukraine. Processing and approving 962,612 submissions starting from 2022

• Reconciliation efforts with notoriously under served indigenous nations to improve dismal conditions of services support, locate and providing funding to document the Residential school genocide and providing better support to survivors.

• Reinvestment in one of the most challenging Public health care landscapes in the world due to the sheer landmass the government is constitutionally on the hook to cover.

• A history making sized population of people now reaching retirement age and requiring more drastic critical health interventions and social supports than ever before.

Static commitments like NATO spending are a bit like rent. If you are financially struggling through other financially challenging problems the landlord cannot often be convinced to give you a temporary forgiveness for extenuating circumstances. All of the above things are challenges that are either in service to international peace against the encroachment of Russia, the thing NATO was created to do, or they represent inflexible commitments the government has to serve the needs of it’s people as written into it’s own laws… But a NATO landlord has a contract with a number and the number doesn’t change no matter what.

I know it’s not the case because the studies basically are for a wider population set than just transgender people… But even if it weren’t, even if it was to create a population of trans mice to use for experiments benefiting trans people; we need it.

People rag on about the possibilities of regret for the transitioned but it is so statistically rare that it really isn’t a huge problem… but one of the actual risks of existing as a trans or intersex person is medicine in general doesn’t test or teach for your population. Trans people are very often given entirely wrong doses of meds because of assumptions about how they should react to them. Rule of thumb is that the adage that for anyone on horomones “trans women are women, trans men are men” is basically the way to go. This is because if you treat an Assigned male at birth person on feminizing estrogen like you would a phenotyical cis man for purposes of dose chances are that you will give them too much. The drugs will linger in the paitents system just like drugs do for cis women and we already know that is a great way to cause unwanted damages to the paitents’ organ function and for desired care outcomes to tank. There are also some meds and health conditions which do have unique presentations in populations with mixed sex characteristics and a more in depth understanding of the nature of sex and the body is how you get cool new things.

There is a largely empty hole in medicine where trans and intersex people are concerned and having an army of “transgender” mice to test against actually would be something of benefit. I know this is a generally unacceptable thing to point out to transphobes however because in a lot of ways they just want being trans to be riskier to force people away from considering being openly trans as a viable option.

It is probably the case that if your friends do veiw you as a friend and aren’t made aware that this isn’t because of something they did but a way you are then this behaviour is likely hurting them to some degree or another. Your discription of how you interfsce with friends is fairly consistent with cluster B personality disorders but that doesn’t mean it’s automatically bad. It does mean that if you want to become a safe person to associate socially with you are going to need to put in more work than average to learn what other people generally need out of relationships and to recognize pain that is going to be difficult to empathize with… And if you decide to become a safe person it will mean being more open with your friends about parts of the human experience that are assumed but in your case not shared.

Most people have needs out of friendships that if they are not met and they cannot identify why they are not met they can sort of look inwards and self emotionally mutilate, picking themselves apart to find what it wrong with themselves to warrant cold behaviour. People’s first instinct is to ask “what about me makes me undeserving.” and are very good at populating a list.

Guilt and shame for most of us is the fastest emotional response. It is way faster than reason. People who think they may have wronged you or are being rejected by you will feel guilty first and then have to pick the emotion apart to figure out if they should actually feel guilt or shame… and then even if they realize they did nothing wrong might still feel guilt or rejection. A lot of being a safe person regardless of whether one has disordered emotional issues or not involves making sure they have the tools to not feel guilt, shame or rejection for very long. The faster they can rationalize and compartmentalize what is happening isn’t about them it is about you the more likely it is to not stick and develop into a longer term emotional injury or weakness. Once someone has been put in a position to effectively bully themselves that creates possible long term damage. A lot of the time, particularly for young people first experiencing this who have not learned how to be safe around people with cluster B disorders the outcome resolves as long term anger towards the person who made them question themselves.

If your friends are growing apart it may be because they already think you do not care about them and have already gone through this self bullying process but have now started to trade notes to see if they are the problem or not. If they reach a mutual concensus about you being emotionally unrecipricative then they might withdraw to avoid being hurt further. A sense of being valued in some form is a nessisary portion of friendship for most people. They will project that assumption of being valued and emotionally cared for onto you by default if you act like a friend because that is something they do when they act that way and even if they logically know it isn’t reciprocated they might not give up on you if you show effort to keep them in your life. Someone who acts like a friend but never did show signs of caring is more often than not going to be falsely attributed as once caring but withdrawing that care for a reason, which is in some relationship circumstances is inflicted as a punishment. So even if it’s not your intention people might interpret your behaviour not as rude but as a deliberate act of cruelty.

If you want them to stick around then letting them know that you like the experience of them as people in some way is key. Like if you find them more entertaining than most or recognize their good qualities then letting them know is what is going to keep them around.

What nobody tells you is that people before the age of 25 tend to make closer relationships where they emotionally risk more and become closer faster. Generally speaking it is more difficult to make as dedicated friends as an older adult as people are less likely to latch and a lot of people when they fail to make these types of high risk close friendships later in life interpret themselves as deficient as a person. You are in the prime age of emotionally high risk but high reward friendships. That does mean that the way these friendships resolve might become formative to the people around you as you might be one of the first non-safe relationships they have as they have not built adequate defenses. Wounds suffered in youth have an outsized effect and if things go particularly south without adequate explanation they may particularly remember you long term as a source of personal anguish.

Remember this, vulnerability is a bonding behaviour, your vulnerability just works a lot different than other people’s. People might reject you if they can’t figure out how to interface with your type of vulnerability but some will genuinely recognize it as you risking something because you ultimately value them not being hurt over their usefulness and function in your life. There are a lot of people out there with empathy above and beyond the median… But I would recommend therapy for lessons on how to navigate relationships in a non-standard way.

Violence tends to be a double edged sword. Whether or not things get better as the result of an outbreak of violence is hit and miss. A lot of authoritarian regimes in history just get replaced with new authoritarian regimes that have a better PR team and create a leniency period before cranking back the progress once people figure everything has been fixed. Long term it’s not great prospects. Anarchist activities tends to create this sort of thing. It creates a power vacuum to which the first one to break the faith and assemble a new loyal hierarchy while murmuring a smokescreen of empty hymns of the old cause is rewarded by becoming the new tyrant. Oftentimes there is a promise of whatever state of oppression being a transitory period. You aren’t supposed to notice that the transitory period after which they say that they will surrender their stranglehold to the rightful inheritance of the people never comes to fruition and instead just becomes a new dynasty of effective monarchs living it up.

But other times it’s just another tool in the box of movements that are fighting against occupation. It usually helps if there’s a peaceful arm of the movement who will get most or all of the credit after the fact whom can hold the dialogue space. Every Civil rights fight that had a non-violent movement leader also had “unrelated” people in the field under a different banner solving some problems with violence. Black Panthers, Butterfly Brigade, bomb weilding suicide suffragettes, indigenous anti colonial movements… These are part of the landscape and the actions they took were given space to be picked over by contemporaries because provocative acts lend punch to rhetoric. If you have no legitimate means to solve the violence done to you other than violence then the problem still needs solving so violence it is. What is effective in this model is collective directed action with planned objectives to fit into existing systems or that come with fully drawn up replacements for old systems. Not as sexy as anarchy but the wins are on the whole more stable and enduring. If you want a democracy then your problem solve should at least should have a true core of people whose ultimate intention is to operate democratically. Violence has a seat at that table too but weilding it justly is a commitment.

Gods, this old chestnut… Hey, on behalf of the Trans-Non-binary community can we retire this please? Not because it’s offensive, it isn’t, we just heard it more on average and it was always just bland weak sause shit. Reseting the clock on this boring ass joke from reddit five years ago is cringe. You wanna troll somebody at least make an effort greater than “I know you are but what am I?!”

For me it’s been longer than that. I am a queer Canadian and anytime I have travelled the US or stayed with friends and seen any group carrying or wearing American flags that hasn’t given me the “ick” so much as rung alarm bells that those people are not safe.

Thing is, it’s the same thing with the Canadian flag. Any group flying too many Canadian flags outside of Canada Day is likely to be Conservative and anti-queer. Anti-Trans protesters or anti-vaxxers on highway overpasses? Canadian flag. Lifted truck soaring down the highway with a “Fuck Trudeau” bumper sticker - Canada flag. Hoard of protesters demanding book bans, group of people protesting Pride with a “you are gunna burn pedos” sign, antiDEI crusader mob - Canadian flag. It doesn’t take long before one starts to draw certain conclusions about a person’s character when they wave it around. For those of us trans folk who can it’s a sign to hide. A literal red flag.

Amoungst the left up here the flag is a complicated symbol. Many of us on the West Coast see it as a symbol of colonial practice and an insensitive declaration of an occupying nation on stolen territory for people who are still here and whose original sovereignty is still not properly acknowledged. It’s not a symbol of pride and if personally used as such it’s a sign of insensitivity and work to be done. At the same time I would not say that I am not proud of my Country for how far we’ve come. We are a nation in therapy who has the opportunity to put the work in to getting over some really bad murderous and selfish flaws and try new things to make things right. When I had an American friend up here it took a bit for him to understand how seriously the effort is to recon with our past and he treated us like a utopia of leftist sentiment but it is like therapy, yeah we might be putting the work in - but we can see how much further we need to go and praise doesn’t hit us as “job well done” it’s a reminder of how shitty it still is. But if anyone ever thinks that this complicated and nuanced relationship to country would stop us from rallying together to fight to preserve our rights to keep working towards that better future they would be dead wrong.

So I understand pretty well where you’re coming from but for a lot of us this isn’t a particularly new thing. It just is affecting more and more people as they wake up to realizing how these symbols are used.

Yup, already had the “flee or stand and die” convo with my partner a few weeks ago. I am firmly willing to risk death to defend the progress we’ve made as a Province and Nation. We aren’t perfect and are early in the process but we’re trying to recon with our history of colonial genocide and embrace a truer multiculturalism which the US refuses to even acknowledge. We have made commitments to the health and well-being of all citizens, not just the productive bodies which fuel the markets. It’s incomplete but aspirational and walking it back would be a disgrace.

The American democracy is an outdated shambles that has fallen into ruin and I will not be bound by it by choice. There is no freedom or opportunity the USA can offer us. Only more oppression on rights we already have enshrined.

C-3P0, our translator for R2’s boopspeak uses he/him pronouns for the little guy and so does at least Luke so he’s effectively masc presenting. One could argue he’s a man but the society he’s in effectively classes sentient droids as property without the reserve they do for non-artificial species and are unlikely to confer the other cultural aspects “manhood” onto a droid.

This is a holdover of gay hookup codes.

Basically every generation of queer folk back when being queer meant a legitimate threat to life (imprisonment, castration, torture or violence) or through precarity (being disowned, losing one’s job or benefits) queer folk lived like spies and used codes to quietly signal their status to others. There are some that have been easily lost to history but some would either be decoded and then become too dangerous to use openly… Or the straights would think it’s neat and adopt the fashion without realizing what it actually was being used for likewise making it too dangerous to openly use. So there’s these layers of abandoned code.

Modern codes are more complex and not as covert as folk have realized that a lot of straights wouldn’t know queer code if it came up and performed a drag routine on their nose. Like Pride events people wear flag colors that tell you what their deal is but straight folk only really tend to recognize maybe a handful. Others are less obvious, there’s a club color code of bandana that is very specific to kink and sexual orientation depending on what color and how you wear it.

It’s hard not to take offense to your comment. Millennials did not spearhead shit. You were GIVEN the opportunity to be yourselves.

As a Millennial hard agree there. The old guard had to deal with mobs running the bars, institutions letting them die and in select places forming militia to prevent people from going out and beating queer people for fun. Millennials aren’t the spearhead, we’re like mid shaft of the spear at best.

That being said we’re all gunna have to go back to the hardcore roots if we want to uphold the civil rights wins of the past. This all is gunna get messy.

Elon Musk has a well documented track record of supporting far right causes that mirror Nazi ideology. At the Inauguration he performed two Nazi salutes (one to the crowd and one to the flag). He routinely promotes the methods of genocides of trans people and Palistinians through both verbal parlance and through direct funding and uses well known euphemisms in support of white supremacy causes. He has authoritarian leanings tasked with removing from government service entire administrative arms that previously were not electable or apointable positions (because they were staffed with experts whose task is to stick to their guns of scientific or proven best practice and not simply be yes men telling the administration what they want to hear).

He also has never denied making a Nazi salute in the days since it’s happened instead deciding to make Holocaust and Nazi featured jokes.

At this point what evidence can be put forward that he is not a Nazi?

I feel for both you and your friend. Over the last while with trans stuff being in the news so much it does feel like being constantly under fire with a lot of hope for things getting better like they were even five years ago going by the wayside. I have a friend who has struggled with BPD on top of being trans and it has been kind of hard telling her that she actually is being a little too sensitive and assuming way more hostility than she’s actually receiving from people in her life by “mind reading” intentions that are not there.

As one of the few other trans people in her life it’s really hard being her reality check. When we queer folk have community we do a better job of keeping each other grounded and advocating for the general intentions of cis family, friends and romantic partners and give them grace to be imperfect allies. We can acknowledge when things suck because of a lack of understanding or because someone is still hurting us despite not wanting to… But that’s not always based out of transphobia. The world is imperfect and sometimes that means we don’t always have our cake and eat it too.

It may seem like a pedantic difference but you are missing a key part of what’s going on here. Nobody is challenging that gender dysphoria is a bad thing to experience… This policy is saying it’s kosher to proclaim “transness is a mental illness” which means in effect that encompasses gender euphoria and all expressions of gender incongruity as symptoms of a mental illness. It’s a subtle linguistic difference but one makes it possible to publicly derride trans people as being delusional or harmful to people around them or dangers to themselves and push for “curing” all transness by approaching being trans as a failure state.