Cait the Proud Trans Woman

Cait is a grandmother, activist, translator (🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇷🇺 > 🇬🇧), writer, artist, musician, gamer, footy fan, and a bit of a flirt (show me yer shoulders, sweetie!). Transition 11/92, HRT 11/94.

Hugs and flirting welcome. I will never lie about your appearance. #ProudToBeTrans

Striving every day to be anti-racist & equity-based. I have a #PrivilegeJar.

PFP by [@SummerKnight](https://mastodon.art/@SummerKnight )
I live in poverty. No blood from stones. :/
YouTube: Historical gaming, war gaming, and FM24

#nobridge

Pronouns: She/her/elle/ella/sie/она - https://en.pronouns.page/@oldladyplays
Usually found in: Waterloo CANADA - on the Haldimand Tract, land owned by the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg and Chinonton peoples, the latter of whom were wiped out by the European settlement of the land.
Mental brassiere: aka Sisyphus' boulder-holder
Youtuber: https://www.youtube.com/c/oldladyplays

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2026-07-08T02:06:40Z

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Last Notes

2026-01-21 19:10:43 GMT

PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION!
If you are a Canadian citizen or resident, please sign this petition to the federal government.
It requests that gender affirming care be guaranteed for trans youth. This petition can save lives. Please sign it.
https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Sign/e-7005
Spread it as much as you can on your social media. Let's get this baby flying. I want them to get even more signatures than I did for my trans asylum petition three years ago. Please make sure you tell people that all residents of Canada are eligible to sign, but you must have a Canadian address to sign. If you are unhoused, ask somewhere local to you for an address you can use to sign it.
You will have to give an email address to it, which you must use to confirm you signed, or your signature will be invalid.
-=-=-
Boosts not only invited, but crucial to the success of this very, very important social action. I'd love to see a million people sign it. You have my explicit permission to screenshot this post and spread it anywhere you want, on any social media platform you think will have Canadian residents to spread it to.
-=-=-
The most that a petition before has gotten has been about 300,000. I want us to blow right past that, and roll that one up for tokes.
Canadians! Please join your trans neighbours in helping provide relief to trans youth. Speaking as a former trans youth, this would have changed my life completely. We can still do that for our neighbours' children.
Please help make it happen.

2026-01-08 16:25:22 GMT

USan media are amazing in their beliefs about the world.
For days, I've seen one commentator after another saying that "NATO will fall apart if the US leaves!"
This, to put it mildly, is an expression of great ignorance. Every time it is said.
NATO has 32 member states, most of which are very certain that NATO becomes only more important when the US becomes an unreliable partner. The collective might of Europe (and Canada) is probably superior to all the world military entities save only the US and possibly China. The arrogance of USan exceptionalism is staggering: "without us, why would anyone want to bother allying?"
People wonder how the US can have elected fascists twice. It's simple: the US has fostered and encouraged, in every way, its citizens to be completely unaware of the world outside their borders. Many can't pick out their own country on an unlabelled globe, let alone any other countries.
So they have a simple propagandists' view of their health care system, where the ability of the wealthy to access advanced medical techniques is unimpaired, while normal USan people suffer and starve trying to access health care. And for tens of millions of USans, the idea of having what virtually every democracy has, health care as a human right, is a joke, because everyone "knows" it's impossible to get good health care without profit being involved.
So frustrating to watch helplessly while tens of millions of gleefully ignorant troglodytes vote for their own immiseration, and a violent gangster fascist regime.
Me, I'm waiting for the special ops team to cross into New Brunswick and take a few shots at the US border post.
I mean, it worked the last time, right? Famously, invading Poland on a manufactured pretext ended with infinite success for the little Austrian guy, right? The thousand-year reich still going strong, is it?
No?
Well, what a surprise. Surely USan folk will understand now...right?
Right?
🤨

2025-11-03 01:26:24 GMT

At school* Friday morning, I was mildly disturbed to see one of the few masc-presenting people in the class arrive dressed as Harry Potter. Others were in various costumes. I waited through the guest speaker, then caught up with him at break.
I said, "this is unofficial, k? I'm speaking here as a trans woman in your community, not a lab instructor. This will not affect my evaluation of your work.
"But you do know that that gear is going to make for unhappy days for any trans or nonbinary person, and many other queer groups?"
He says, "Oh, yeah, I know about Rowling being TERF and such, but i thought since I do know that, it would be ok."
I looked at him dubiously. Social work student, mind.
"For me? That doesn't really mitigate you helping to fund my loss of rights. So...why not subvert it instead? You wanna do HP, first, don't buy any more merch. Second, you don't do Potter.
"You do Herman Grainger. A trans guy. Curly hair, haughty attitude, swot, top student vibe. Subvert it! Make it something JKR would hate. That's a powerful message of allyship, instead of building her anti-trans war chest."
He liked the idea. And I think got the deeper lesson, about being in a social justice field, you need to think about these things. If you had a trans client who came in on Hallowe'en, how are they going to feel seeing you wear merch that enriches someone who wants them not to exist?
Great teachable moment, and I think he got the idea. No further action needed, to me.
* I'm working, as every autumn, at a local small college that has a Bachelor of Social Work program, as well as a summer intensive MSW program. I'm one of three long-time activists teaching community organising alongside a prof of social work. We 3 are the lab instructors. Class goal: plan and execute a social action. A rally, sit-in, whatever. Something disruptive. They get 10 weeks to plan what we each could do and have done in three days. It's a fun job. Radicalising young social workers. 💚

2025-10-18 23:26:22 GMT

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Good. 10 million next time. Get it done, white folk. Get your ass on the line for once.

2025-10-16 06:55:51 GMT

When i was born, there were11 moons of Jupiter.
Now there are 97.
What could be causing it?
I know!
Put RFK Jr on the case! He can crack any wild increase in numbers with his awesome powers of pulling turds from his ass which have the causes of things written on them.
Last week he found one that just said Tylenol!

2025-10-13 06:50:43 GMT

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10/10
In the end, Ukraine is now one of the predominantly skilled military forces in Europe. They will make a lot of money after the war, sending their troops to teach the rest of NATO to fight the Ukrainian way.
And Russia? Well, Russia may well end up breaking apart. Independence movements are making unusual amounts of noise in the East, Siberia and several other regions as well. And Russia no longer has the troops to quell those movements effectively. Or the gas to get them there. Or the money to pay them.
It might well be that the Russian empire completely vanishes in a puff of Putin’s hubris.
Happy to hear critiques. I can be wrong about things, I concede. These are predictions, based on the progress of the situation, and what information I’ve been able to gather from various sources. Obviously, predictions are only as good as they turn out to be accurate.
So maybe I will look like a fool in four months, when Russia busts a move and suddenly rushes forward?
But I’m pretty confident that won’t be the case.
Fin.

2025-10-13 06:49:58 GMT

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9/10
It feels like a military inevitability at this point. That the Russian troops are near to break point, and some small impetus can push them over the line into a rabble fleeing the war, instead of a formed force.
The Ukrainians won’t be able to just sweep forward and take their land back, of course. The Russians have been flattening everything between the Russian border and the front lines, building minefields, and all kinds of nastiness. It will take time for Ukraine to carefully move forward and occupy the abandoned Russian positions, and more time to push the borders back where they started ten or more years ago.
There. That’s it. That’s my entire thesis here.
I believe the final blow will be when Europe finally seizes the money frozen in European banks that is nominally Russian. That 300 billion will become, I expect, the Rebuilding Fund for the start of Ukraine’s return to normalcy.
And make no mistake. They had help in supplied weapons to be sure. That helped them stabilize the lines, and keep the Russians held still. Then they kicked their brain trust into gear, and started flat-out outthinking the Russians.
This is, in the end, going to be a Ukrainian victory. Helped by allies, to be sure, but they’re the ones who have paid in blood and lives and ruined cities, and they’re the ones who I believe deserve the credit for the victory I see them compiling. This war will be studied endlessly for its tactical innovations, AND strategic innovations, showing ways in which a smart smaller country can ju-jitsu a much larger country into losing itself the war it started.

2025-10-13 06:49:36 GMT

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8/10
Instead of retreating to let them extend their own lines, Ukraine did it for them.
Because, crucially, this time? Russia’s not defending. It’s the invader. The myth of invincibility was built on being clever about defence.
So things are very bad now. Gas shortages are affecting the front lines too now, and winter is coming. General Moroz has switched sides. The Russian troops are facing an oncoming winter without fuel to keep them from freezing, or food to keep them from starving, without reinforcements that aren’t coming, without ammunition or armoured vehicles (far too vulnerable to Ukrainian drone advances).
Soon, they won’t be getting paid at all. Or fed. Or given ammo. Or heat. Or medical supplies for their neglected wounded.
These conditions are ripe for collapsing morale, and eventually, collapsing lines, as the troops begin to stream away, or surrender in large numbers to avoid starving or freezing.
That’s why I say it’s maybe three or four months out. That’s the length of the winter. I don’t believe they’re going to be able to maintain a viable fighting force on the front lines by the time that winter ends. So sometime before then, and it may be very sudden, things will break. And the rearguard troops can shoot as many AWOL troops as they can, but they’re not going to stop it.
That’s my case. I’ve been noodling at this for months, trying to see a way the Russians can get out of the inevitable end that appears to be coming, and I can’t see one. There’s a Ukrainian vice around their metaphorical nuts, and it’s cranking tighter and tighter.

2025-10-13 06:49:12 GMT

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7/10
Right, so we're more or less up to date with where it is now.
Why do I think it will end soon?
Because the money has run out. They're using increasingly extreme measures to bolster the war chest, snaking cash from oligarchs to "show their patriotism". Forcing banks to turn over their deposits to the regime. Customers' money.
Obviously, this cannot continue forever.
We are now in a spot where Russia cannot move frorward. But they can't retreat, either, because Putin will order executions of people who take even one step back (shades of Hitler, huh?).
Putin, meanwhile, is well aware that if he loses the war, or accepts a ceasefire or worse a peace deal that doesn't give him control of Ukraine, he's finished. He'll be deposed or betrayed by someone with enough force to make it stick, and he'll end up either dead or fleeing the country to somewhere he can be safe. Probably the Gulf States. Where he can live in peace with his vast hoard of stolen Russian money. Because would you give odds that he's let all those oligarchs plunder the treasury without getting some of the action himself? That he's willing to let oligarchs have more money than he gets?
No way. I feel confident in suggesting he's squirreled away amounts that make any two or three oligarchs pale in comparison.
So they can't move forward. Can't move back. Can't stop the Ukrainians' relentless strikes on their oil infrastructure. With the recent addition of real-time satellite intel from the US about Russia's back areas, Ukraine have become even more effective at avoiding the sparse remaining air defences.
The Ukrainians, then, with sheer brilliance, have manufactured the classic Russian defence strategy, *without* trading a couple of thousand km of their land in doing it.

2025-10-13 06:48:43 GMT

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6/10
Okay. We're nearly there.
As the restrictions on deep strikes are loosened, Ukraine also strikes airfield after airfield, forcing the Russians to stage their aircraft further and further from the front lines. See what I mean about artificially extending Russia's supply lines?
With the reduced refining capacity, and the longer flights, the Russian air force is largely neutered at this poiint.
Also, importantly, gas shortages are now affecting the whole country, right back to the place they really didn't want them to affect: Moscow and Piter.
The Russian civilians are by now getting a taste of war on their doorstep, and they're not loving it. Maybe this Special Military Operation isn't quite as automatic a victory as they'd been told?
Putin ramps up oppression. Cuts down Internet access. Bans apps that aren't Russian-made. Some can still use them, but it's a big blow to public confidence.
It's still quiet on the home front, because Russia's regime is nothing if not brutal in its repression of dissent. But it's a different kind of quiet. A waiting quiet.
It's becoming harder and harder to find new bodies to feed into the grinder. Russia can no longer afford to offer huge signing bonuses (many of which never get paid, through bureaucratic dodges and such). Local police begin sweeping up anyone they can conceivably pin a petty crime on, the punishment for which is either Siberia or Ukraine.
Meanwhile, they've fully converted to a war economy. No civilian goods are being made, basically; all production goes to war materiel. A false dawn appears economically: the rise of military spending boosts a sick economy. But it's not productive spending: it's lliterally blowing your money up by the billions. Trillions in rubles.
The economy is falling apart. They can't cook the books anymore to hide it.

2025-10-13 06:48:14 GMT

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5/10
And so the war continued, no movement at all on the front lines, just endless meat-assaults by the Russians that tried to overwhelm the local troop concentrations with sheer numbers of targets, thinking some of them surely had to get through and damage the defenders. Ukraine calmly defended, retreating when absolutely necessary, preserving their forces as much as possible.
The strikes behind the lines got farther and farther behind the lines. The supply lines for Russian were now becoming unwieldy. And where Putin had tried desperately to insulate the Russian public from the war, here it was showing up on their doorsteps. Closer and closer to the industrial heartland.
Then a shift: the Ukrainians start hitting oil infrastructure. This meant they’d knock down a refinery, then a different one hundreds of km away, forcing the Russian engineering repair teams to be constantly on the move, catching up with the ongoing damage by Ukrainian strikes.
Supplies for those repairs began to dwindle, as the sanctions bit harder. Slowly, the Russian capacity to refine oil began to collapse. Recently, as much as 40% of the refining capacity was offline at once. That has two effects on Russia.
1) They can't refine oil for the whole domestic economy as much as they need.
2) Since the Ukrainians were also hitting export facilities, they couldn't as easily sell their oil, the only real method they had left of bringing in currency they could buy sanctions-busting equipment with.
The war has been extremely expensive for Russia. It has nearly wiped out their foreign currency reserves (built up by Putin over several years), and they're now financing the war by selling "bonds" to Russian banks, which are not allowed to refuse to buy them.
These bonds are being priced right now at 16% interest and up. That's a HUGE number.

2025-10-13 06:47:41 GMT

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4/10
Right. Now forward to Russia, post-Soviet collapse. Putin eventually takes over, and in the service of his growing authoritarian regime, he builds up the myth of invincibility. Russia is destined to be an imperial superpower! Look how we threw back the invaders, twice, to their destruction!
So when Putin starts the open warfare in Ukraine (remembering he’d seized Crimea many years earlier, and the Little Green Men pseudo-invasion of the Donbas and Luhansk regions of Ukraine), he proclaimed that it would be done in three days. They put together a pretty slapdash plan, involving a push on two major fronts: one from Donbas/Luhansk, one towards Kyiv itself, including airborne troops landing at the airport to try and seize it.
Ukraine threw them back from there, pushed right back over the border near Kyiv, and eventually retaking Kharkiv and some other parts. Then the war ground to a more or less halt. The Russians couldn’t push forward any other way than slow, grinding assaults, pouring in men and machines as fast as they could to try and overwhelm the Ukrainian defence.
They managed to make slow, very slow, progress, until even that petered out. Three and a half years into the open phase of the war, they were stalled.
Which is when Ukraine got their strategy working for real.
They had been building up their ability to strike behind the Russian lines, while maintaining the front line as a stalemate. Supply lines were hit, reorg and rest areas were hit, railway lines, junctions, anything they could reach, to push the Russian supply lines to be longer. Frustrated by the restrictions on deep strikes by their weapons providers in the West, they began building their own deep strike assets.

2025-10-13 06:47:13 GMT

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3/10
1941, then. The Germans invade. A brutal invasion, murderous, civilians butchered, horrific scenes. No quarter given on either side. Initially, the invasion proceeds relatively well for the Germans, but as the summer wore on, their progress was slowed, until they found themselves in the same spot as Napoleon. They even fought a major battle on more or less the same ground as the French and Russians had in 1812 (Borodino).
And again, the Germans stalled, as the French had, when the weather turned as they got close to Moscow.
General Moroz awoke, and began to drive them back, starving and freezing.
This was the high tide point for Germany in the east: they'd never get here again.
Huge sacrifice by the Soviets and some clever manoeuvres meant that the German army at Stalingrad (modern Volgograd) was surrounded, and under Hitler's stupid "no retreat" orders, were eventually starved into submission, the 6th Army being captured in tatters.
Back started the movement, with the Soviets pressing hard all the way. All the way back to Berlin, in the end, where the Soviets eventually raised their flag over the Reichstag.
Once again, the myth of invincibility was given a boost in Russian culture. Leaving aside the contributions of the various other Soviet republics, like Ukraine especially, the Russian mythmaking machine went into overdrive, coming to the conclusion that they had won the war.
Now that can be argued, but it's got a degree of truth. However, the contributions of a massive invasion to create a second front for the Germans definitely played a big part (that'd be your D-Day).
And there we are. The myth is complete. The Soviets/Russians are invincible. They threw back Napoleon, they threw back Hitler, nothing could stop them, clearly.
Seeing the issue yet? The invincibility was solely on defence, but it grew to be all-encompassing.

2025-10-13 06:46:41 GMT

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2/10
Right. The French are now nearing their goal. Moscow is on the horizon. They face the Russians at Borodino, in a huge, chaotic battle, and really, neither side wins a victory. Both sides claimed it, but it wasn't clear for either side.
France didn't proceed, but the Russians didn't break them either.
So now it's late autumn, and the Russians now call on their long-time ally, General Moroz. Moroz is "frost" in Russian.
Meaning, the Russian winter arrived. The French, had Moscow. But they had no supplies getting in, and the Russian government had pulled out. Left the empty city to the French. Who could do nothing with it of value.
Napoleon paused. For several weeks, as I recall, he vacillated. By the time he figured out that retreat was called for, it was too late. Winter had arrived.
Now they had to make that 2000-lm+ trek back to their start line, only this time with Russian Cossack cavalry harrying their every move, picking off stragglers, and generally pushing them to keep moving. People started to die in the cold, and of lack of supplies. They were strarving.
On and on the retreat went, more haggard every day, until a meagre total of 60,000 men struggled back to Poland and out of Russia. Napoleon had been defeated; the Russian myth of invincibility was born.
The crucial part of this myth: they didn't talk about the fact that it had only been possible because they were defending the whole time. They retreated, trading land for time, luring the French to go too far, and let the winter sort them out along with the partisan activity crushing their supply lines, keeping their troops awake all night, and things like that.
All in all, a miserable time for the Emperor of France.
Fast forward 130 years. 1941, June 22.
Russia is hit with a "surprise" invasion by their nominal allies, the Germans.

2025-10-13 06:45:57 GMT

Okay, a promised infodump.
So, the war on Ukraine. By Russia. To be utterly clear from the beginning about whose choice this was.
Ukraine has fought this war with an incredible application of sheer brainpower: innovation after innovation, new tactics, new technology, homemade weapons, incredible things.
And they haven't just fired them off randomly to just cause Russian deaths.
They've actually built an incredible strategy based on turning the Russian myth of invincibility upside down.
So first I need to explain that myth, where it comes from, and why it's a mythmaking exercise, and not at all what it's sold as.
First, then, we need to look at Napoleon Bonaparte. The first one.
When he invaced Russia, in 1812, he did so from a start line more or less in modern Poland. He gathered 600,000 troops, from several forcibly allied nations. And off the went to take Moscow. So they marched and they marched, and as they marched, the summer passed, and autumn came. By this time their supply lines were literally thousands of km in length. In a time with no railroads or air transport, that was a HUGE distance. Everything that moved moved by horsepower, or mulepower.
The Russians didn't stand and fight. They fought delaying actions, while their troops destroyed supplies, broke down shelters, and basically scorched the earth for the incoming French armies.
This meant that they couldn't forage from the countryside, as had been Napoleon's innovation earlier in the Napoleonic wars. His men would march much more quickly than other troops, and did so spread out enough to be able to feed themselves by basically taking everything the nearest peasants had. Ruining those people's existence, of course, but keeping themselves fed.
In Russia, this was no longer possible. All supplies had to be brought a couple of thousand km to the front, a wagonload at a time.
1/10

2025-10-08 20:24:01 GMT

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So...when Oger said "it feels like 1933," she's being pinpoint accurate. It is a time when public disdain for trans existence has been led astray by right-wing ideologues, who are destroying scientific understanding of the issues in favour of just making laws against our existence, and using them to imprison (and force detransition) us. Where, in despair, trans people are dying.
So far from being an egregious mischaracterization of the situation, Oger's words were perfectly informed by the actual history.
Gender critical people deny that any of this is true. It certainly sounds like she was pretty sure it was untrue, no?
Then...isn't she a Jewish person who is also a Holocaust denier?
That's a bit grim, isn't it?
Fin/4
The video I was responding to. Jammidodger is awesome, and I love his work. This one is *quite* long (45m). I enjoyed it, though, he's very good at snark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSDTfoLdIR4

2025-10-08 20:23:02 GMT

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Oh, and history. History refutes her utterly. Oger said "it was a bit like 1933". Well, in 1933 the Nazis held their first public book burning. At Magnus Hirschfeld's sexological institute in Berlin, where he'd conducted decades of research into trans people, coining the term that described us, and doing surgeries and HRT with willing experimental subjects. His findings, by the way, or at least their outcomes, we do know about: they reflected the same findings as recent work has repeatedly shown, that transition is by far the best treatment for trans people to live happy, peaceful lives. But all his research notes were burnt that night, and were never recoverable.
CW: Holocaust specifics:
At this point, Jewish people were being rounded up somewhat, mostly intellectuals and the like. So were trans people. Their official passes (worked out by Hirschfeld with local government) were cancelled. Many were imprisoned, some killed. Those who were imprisoned, if they still remained alive in 1945, were immediately imprisoned in West German prisons, as the law against being trans had been kept on the books by the new BRD. There they stayed for as many as 25 more years.
But right now, that was the extent of repression of both groups. It's not a competition. It's the grim recitation of the priorities of the worst humans we have ever produced. That they targeted trans people is not in any historical doubt. That they targeted Jews isn't either. But the Holocaust does not belong to Jewish people. It was perpetrated upon them, just as it was perpetrated with the goal of eliminating trans people, and disabled people, and Roma people, and Slavs generally...the Nazis had large hearts, able to hold vast numbers of hatreds.
3/4
#trans

2025-10-08 20:11:24 GMT

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I don't believe she ever met a trans person in the time she was an "ally" to us. Had she done so, that would surely have made a stronger impression than the random story of one trans person who used really awful methods to try and prove a point about trans acceptance in society (yes, I'm famiilar with the case, I'm a trans activist in Canada).
And there is something truly...overripe and on the path to corrupted rottenness...about claiming that she is being silenced. She is writing in a published article. On the Internet. Where literally anyone in the world can hear her, if she had anything new or interesting to say. This is as clever as right-wing @ssholes going on Piers Morgan to whine about how silenced they are.
I think I've made the case, pretty much. This person was never an ally. She had some knee-jerk responses from her innate decency, then squashed them down and finally turned to the Dark Side because she...(checks notes)...read about a trans person who was bad.
Would an actual ally make that fundamental thinking error? One bad person? Would she be okay if I said "cis women can't be trusted and are clearly sexual predators" because Ghislaine Maxwell exists? I should hope not. I wouldn't be. It's absurd and wrong on its face.
2/4
(sorry, the Holocaust mentions are coming, I thought they'd be in this bit, but they're in the next two)
#Trans

2025-10-08 20:10:12 GMT

From a Youtube comment on a video about a person claiming a PhD in psychology, and a move from "trans ally" to gender-critical shithead.
Never a trans ally. This is someone who viewed herself as a big ally to the trans community because...well, because sometimes she said some things online that weren't completely awful about us.
Being an ally is not something you do once, slap a label on your shirt saying "Trans ALLY!", and never mention again. It's a process. The word ally is also a verb, and should be treated as one. It's not something you did, it's something you are doing. Also, I call some level of bull-crap on this PhD anyway. Does she really have a PhD, and not at the same time understand the most basic realities of reasoning? Like, you don't argue from the specific to the general? If you see a three-legged dog, this woman would say, "you therefore should treat all future dogs as having three legs, and if they don't have three legs, they're not really dogs." I mean, I learned that in undergrad. How'd she miss it through years of postgrad work?
She "did her own research". That's interesting. So she gathered a group of trans people and a group of cis people who definitely weren't trans in hiding or unknowing yet, and put them into a study and control group, and observed their responses to situations to accumulate data about how they differed from one another? Because that's what I learned about how to do research in the social sciences. Do those not apply to psychology? I had rather thought they did. What she did was google "trans people bad", and read some blog and Twitter posts from the results. That's not research. That's just confirmation bias' mainspring of action in the modern world. It's what the right wing calls "research". The kind that RFK Jr does.
1/4
#Trans

2025-09-25 17:00:32 GMT

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Interesting.
When my son was playing football, I coached his team alongside another parent, an ex-pro called Cliff Calvert.
One day, one of the boys called one of the other boys out for "kicking like a girl".
I said, "Oh, you think that's a thing, do you? Wanna go stand in goal while I take a penalty, then? Or are ya...chicken?"
Well, he had little choice then, did he?
So he stood in the goal, and I got ready to take the penalty. He tried a bit of bravado, saying I could never beat him, girls can't play, and so on. I said nothing.
When he was ready, I stepped up and hammered the ball straight down the middle, about a foot over his head. He got his hands up, but couldn't stop the power, and it went in off his hands.
I turned to look at the boys.
"Anyone else wanna try?"
A lot of shaken heads, tight-lipped.
"Thought so. 'Kick Like a Girl' is a compliment, lads."

2025-09-23 08:53:29 GMT

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Fair points. No argument.

2025-09-23 08:43:53 GMT

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It's possible? Not saying you're wrong. But I do lean more towards it's a blood purity thing. They don't like people who think differently. They don''t know how to make us think like them, and they don't feel safe unless everyone is thinking ilke them. Eugenicists are driven by fear. Fear of people in power not being white. Fear of majority brown nations. All kinds of other racist shit. And ableist. And queerphobic. Misogynistic. And so on.
It's about bigotry. They can't cope with seeing people they have convinced themselves are inferior outworking and surpassing them.
There has to be a sinister someone behind them, helping them out, because we all know that the white man is supreme!
It is perfectly fitted to Trump's worldview. He has that bizarre idea that somehow his uncle being a professor at MIT makes him very smart and having "great genes".
No. His grandfather's mediocrity produced DJT's father, AND somehow his intelligent son too. And DJT got none of the smart bits.
It's why I think he was drawn to Nazism in tthe first place. He believes he has better blood than us. Like a king. That he was destined to rule.
They appeal to his ego, so he swallows it whole.

2025-09-23 08:30:00 GMT

When RFK Jr. "investigates" autism, be aware that he is deliberately and knowingly engaging in eugenics.
He's literally looking for ways to eliminate people like me from the human race.
I'm autistic.
So when you ask "what causes you?", you're positioning me as something that needs to be investigated. Something that needs to be "cured", which is to say, eliminated. Because I think in a different pattern than some folk do.
When someone says, "X causes autism, so avoid X", they're saying, "or your kid might have (gasp) *autism* too!"
This is eugenics. It's Nazi stuff. Not an exaggeration. A "science" under the Nazis.
We are not broken. We do not need fixing. We just think differently. But we have always been around. That dude that wrote an eleven-volume handwritten guide to every herb in one county in England, or wherever it was? Telling me he wasn't one of my people? GTF.
We are and always have been productive and innovative members of society. If anything, we should be seen as an advantage to the species: diversity of thought is *better* thought. Not ours or yours better - but ours and yours are.
We aren't a threat, we're not (for the most part) needing round-the-clock specialist care - but be human, will you? If someone needs that, maybe give it to them? Because they're people?
Didn't we fight a big war about this a few years back? Something about a guy with a bad moustache who didn't like the disabled people in his society? Among his many targets?
Seems to me his central thesis was "I will decide who's people and who isn't people."
And that some of us are saying, "How about maybe not? How about all the people matter, and we try to keep ourselves alive all together?"
I cannot personally imagine how anyone decides his plan is better. Or more moral.
But I'll be over here on Team Everybody Else.
#ActuallyAutistic

2025-09-22 07:39:42 GMT

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Five times a day, minimum.
I've been trying to learn this better for 44 years? I fell in love with tutone ska, in the early 80s, and I heard and took in their message of unity and love.
That didn't make me knowledgeable about how to do it properly.
And so the first issue I tried to get involved with, the boycott of South Africa against Apartheid, I went to one meeting, and basically bounced off the people doing the work already.
They knew they didn't have time to educate an uneducated white girl at the same time as they fought to help free South Africans from the racist oppression. So was gently but firmly shown the door. They genuinely appreciated my enthusiasm, but loving ska and feeling the unity sound doesn't replace doing the damn work.
So I sat back, and took stock. And I thought there's something here I need to learn about first. Something I've missed.
And I sat down with books, and I learned. And I made genuine friends with Black classmates, in a school with maybe 10% Black students, by asking if I could join a conversation when I heard people talking about people I'd been reading. I had to get some humble. And it was good. I needed to learn that. Most white people could always use a good dish of more humble. Including me still.
But as I listened and learned and read and got to know my friends, and see their lives...I slowly began to grasp the horror of what they were experiencing.
And once your eyes open, it's very hard to shut them again. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Or I can't.
The thing I learned was that if I want to help advocate for the community, leverage my privilege to end my privilege, I need to earn trust by building relationships. Genuine relationships. Give and take. Learn and grow.
The other thing? The work is never done. It takes way more than a lifetime generally holds to root out the poison from every corner of us. I've been genuinely trying for 44 years, and I haven't got it right yet.
I keep trying.

2025-09-21 12:33:56 GMT

A Conversation About Trans People Getting Old
Friend: You're amazing
Cait (she/her/elle)
Why is that? I'm just a trans girl who got old.
Friend: Because that rarely happens
Cait (she/her/elle)
Not true at all. There are plenty out there. But when we transitioned, the rule - like, if you break it you're out of the clinic entirely - was that you MUST be stealth. It was strongly recommended that you move cities, and cut ties with everyone you knew.
So we did what we had to. We hid from the world. We pretended to be cis women. Some of us married men, and adopted kids because we were infertile cis women. And never told them our past.
And they got old. But they're still stealth, only now they have a second life built up. They have spouses and kids and friends and jobs and everything. And if they come out, they fear losing it all, as they already did once. Believe me, having lost it all? I would never do it again, for anyone.
They're not "not there". They just can't afford to be out. Some few of us can, for various reasons. I have been for 20-odd years. But it's not been easy, and I pay for it. I can't resent my sisters who choose not to pay a second time.
So we exist. There are many of us. I know a few, a very few. And they're super careful about even talking to me, the green-haired widely-known activist trans woman. We talk on Signal only, and they use burner phones. I'm their only contact with trans community, because they're terrified.
We exist. We just can't all be out about it. So I try extra hard to be super out. To help make up for their necessary absence.
We do get old, dear. You will too. The present bullshit will pass, in time, and we will live openly and happily again. It has before, and it will again. That's why we fight against it, those of us who can. Because we know we can and will win, in the end. We have before.
Hold strong, my friend. We're not doomed.
====
If you're moved, help me do activism if you can:
https://gogetfunding.com/help-zara-reach-safety/

2025-09-17 07:04:33 GMT

Not me, just chilling waiting for my cheque from the mysterious dark ((((funders)))) of my left-wing activism.
It's odd, though. Because I've been told all of the 30+ years of activism I've done, that we're all paid agitators, people who hate our country, and so on.
And yet my cheque has never arrived. No crisp-packets full of cash, either. I guess I'm not much of an activist, because I've never met anyone yet who was being paid to be an activist on the left.
I guess we must just be that incompetent and bumbling, right? Because at the same time as we're all highly trained antifa super-soldiers with high Sorosalaries, we're also incapable of accomplishing anything of value to society.
It's a dilemma kind of like being trans, really. I'm assured repeatedly that I must have dominated the women's sport that I played for 20 years. I don't recall that happening at all, so I asked my old teammates, and some of my opponents.
Unkindly, they laughed at me suggesting I must have been dominant because of my inherent male supremacy.
But let's take it as true.
It's odd, then, that I was *also* kicked out of the military for being trans, because of my inherent weakness and unsuitabillity to kill for my country.
I contain multitudes, apparently. I am concurrently broke as a one-legged parrot with a speech impediment, but also a highly-paid professional activist for the left. And an antifa super-soldier, but too weak to serve my country.
I have astonishingly wide ranges of powers.

2025-09-12 22:16:44 GMT

It's a very interesting thing to me that when we see people use images of Suffragettes fighting for the right for women to vote...the women pictured are pretty much exclusively white women.
And yet we know that women of colour, particularly Black women, fought three times as hard to be part of that movement, to help bring about their own rights as well as others', fighting the racism of their fellow campaigners as much as the sexism of the men holding power.
It's just interesting how over time, we've slowly whitewashed that image, erasing the contributions of Black women, while also failing to note that Black women effectively *didn't* get the vote until much later than white women.
Just one of those subtle ways white supremacy works. Resist it. When you see a media outlet do this, call it to their attention. Demand they show the real movement, in all its beauty and diversity, rather than just the largely rich white women who "led" it.

2025-09-12 12:00:35 GMT

Had a friend pop up on Discord this morning from Australia. She'd a friend who's going to her first rally tomorrow, and the friend is scared. So she asked me to give them a good coach's halftime speech.
I spoke of how they live in terror, how they're driven by it, how their uniform dress makes them feel strong, and that sort of thing.
And they had already learned Bella Ciao on the recorder for leading a song or two.
So I suggested one more song. This is an old one, from the War Against the Fash, and it's not very...correct anymore. But it's a fun one, and I've found it really bothers Nazis when they hear you sing it.
🎶
Hitler, that man had just one ball
Goering, had two but very small
Himmler, had something similar,
And poor Goebbels, had no balls, at all.
🎶
It's a very familiar old tune, sometimes known as the River Kwai March, or the Colonel Bogey March (searching either will give you an example of the tune).
I've used it to great effect against wannabe Nazis when they march up, all proud and brave in their black clothes and their masks. Because it has a marching tune, it can be very funny to start off whistling it, to get them whistling it themselves, and then to start the crowd singing the words.
Anyway, just for a little lightening of your day. And...really, pass the thread by if your only contribution is to say it's not very progressive. It isn't. But it's VERY antifascist, and I think that matters more right now.
Also, my German friends, I know the rhymes don't actually work in German; they do in an English accent, though. Treat Goering as Goring, use similar to rhyme with Himmler, and Goebbels as "go-balls". Then it works just fine.
Oh, and if anyone gets the idea to reword it for the fascist USA: *please* tag me on that post?
I *must* hear your version. I'm thinking Donald, Hegseth, Miller, and Marco, for the two-syllable name portion. Two of them will want rhymes if you can.

2025-09-03 15:18:34 GMT

Something I need to get off my chest here.
I have been an activist for more than 30 years. Often working alone, sometimes with a partner, but working nonetheless.
The basis of everything I have done or attempted was hope. Is hope.
If I don't hope I can make a change, then why am I fighting for change? If it's hopeless, why not give up and do something more fun with my time and energy? I'm disabled. I have limited time and energy already. But I'm willing to give them in service of my community.
But I need - NEED - to have hope that it can succeed. Not that it must. My first ever action failed completely. Publicly humiliatingly. Same with my second action. Again, a total failure, the legislation not passed, no help for the community.
So I know failure. My third action? It worked. And I had a string of successes. And then some failure. And more success. And so on.
Obviously, I know that not every time I take on a project, that I will win. I'm good at what I do, and I win more than I lose, but it's close.
But in order to keep doing that, to keep being who I am, I *need* hope. Without it, I'm nothing.
So when I see people whose only goal is to spread defeatist propaganda - which is to say, fascist propaganda, since if you're telling me I can't win, then you're doing their job for them - I can't spend time around them.
This is too big a fight for that. We're playing with literal lives this time. The stakes are WAY too high to be around people who think we're all going to lose.
So if you can't stop yourself from writing it...can you at least CW the ones that are going to be doomerist? I don't even care if you use the CW feature to do it, keep it open if you want, but write that CW at the top.
Because I don't need to take psychic damage from my own side. I'm taking enough from the other side, with their threats and so on. I've faced those for 30 years. I can hack it.
But I can't hack fascist agitprop from our people.
Please. This isn't a game.

2025-08-30 07:20:00 GMT

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I *love this*. As a translator... chef's kiss! 💋
"La merdification" - instant classic. Clean, straight to the point. Immediately recognizable to the EN/FR bilingual.
I am so going to be working that into my conversations.
English ones especially. Anglophones mostly won't know what I am saying, still worrying about their aunt's pen and a particular table. Or going to the library at all times of the day.
Thanks for posting about this. That was a good laugh.

2025-08-11 18:04:19 GMT

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"So last night in my D&D campaign, you're going to love this, my character..."

2025-08-09 21:50:29 GMT

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Gosh, but you are spitting some truths today. You're wearing out my boost button. I mean, do carry on, it's brilliant, I'll sacrifice the finger for this.

2025-08-08 08:02:35 GMT

One of the hidden gems of being on Fedi is that people here are, generally, not falling for the LLM hype.
So we don't get much in the way of deepfake videos, or other AI slop, coming down our timelines (or at least, I certainly don't; no one I follow is making or boosting AI slop).
I was just watching a video warning about this, and the creator said "we've probably all been swarmed by those ads using deepfakes to push dodgy financial schemes" - I'm like, what? we have? - "and further, deepfakes of politicians all over social media, being pushed in front of us". Again, I"m thinking "Wow, that's not my experience of social media."
But this is my only social media site, really. I don't count Discord; those are basically closed systems. They don't push anything in front of you you didn't already want there.
Which just struck me as interesting. Throw in a really good ad-blocker, and I just don't see any of this shit going around.
And, à propos de rien, I use a web client for Fedi. Which means I get to see my adblocker adding up all the ads it's blocked at the top of each page.
I love coming over to the Fedi tab, because the adblocker counter remains firmly locked on zero.

2025-08-03 19:33:26 GMT

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Speaking as a queer person, the concern i have is that these kinds of laws *always* get used to restrict kids from accessing any information about queer life *of any kind*, because cishet society views *anything* involving queerness to be imherently sexual and thus prevents access by under-18s.
Combine with refusal to acknowledge queer life in any other medium, and you have a situation where queerness becomes once again unavailable in any way to queer kids. Which puts them at greatly increased risk of STIs and bad relationships and no way to find community.
It's got nothing to do with adults' rights.

2025-07-27 14:54:52 GMT

"Who would choose to be trans?"
More and more, I'm thinking I would. Yes, it has meant more than half my life I've been fighting transphobia. Yes, it has led to physical damage and scars I still bear. Yes, it has led to mental trauma that will always haunt me.
And still...I think I would choose this.
In this community, I can have an effect. I can actively work to make things better for my people, in any way I want to. I have that freedom because I've long since gotten used to the poverty, and comfortable with living under it.
The big change I'd make in my life (other than transitioning earlier, which, yeah, I think many of us feel that one) is that I'd ignore the rat-bastards at the gender clinic, and jump straight into the trans community back in 1992. I waited 30 years before I finally took that plunge, and it's by far the biggest regret I have, is that I lost all that time being among my people.
Because my people are smart, funny, caring, insightful, pretty, handsome, sexy either way, and just generally pretty fantastic folk. I know there are exceptions, but I don't have to deal with most of those. Instead I get a community that looks after one another, lifts each other up, mentors new members of the community. That will support one another against the very weight of an entire government, a world of governments, that hate us and wish we would go away.
The average trans person among this community knows more about their own medical care than most doctors. Knows how to navigate the byzantine stupid laws and hoops we have to jump to be ourselves.
And most of us are, pretty reliably, well left of centre politically. We believe in social-benefit goals for a living system, rather than Line Go Up For Bigger Dragon Hoard goals.
In other words, if you carefully constructed a fictional community of trans people? It probably wouldn't be as good as the real thing.
So who would choose this?
Me.

2025-07-26 23:26:19 GMT

Hi! New activism. I'm interrupting my weekend off to ask if there are any people out there with the time and energy to compile a list of recently-passed US laws, state by state and federally, which are aimed at oppressing trans people?
I'm asking because I *think* we have a second potential US trans person's asylum claim to press in Canada, and I want to arm the immigration lawyer with a lot of references to the effects of state and federal laws in restricting trans and nonbinary people from living.
It's possible this already exists. If it does, and you know about it, by all means lay it on me, sibling. If not, the urgency on this would be a few weeks, maybe a month? If a team of folk want to work on it and divide the work, that's awesome too. However you want to work it.
I'm organising a team to help this person.
What we're going to need, first and foremost, are donors. Do we have anyone who might be able to contribute to a fund for this person? They've been thrown out of the marital home by a racist and abusive husband, and have only a couple of hundred dollars in their account, while they sleep at a shelter. If you can help, DM me here or contact me on Signal at oldladyplays.11, and mention ZB as your sign of what you're here about.
Second, a longer shot. This one's open to anyone in or around the Kamloops area. Our potential asylee is currently in a shelter in the 'loops, and it'd sure be nice if we could get them out of there. If you know anyone who could put up a tenant for what could be several months, I'm going to be trying to raise money to provide rent to such a person. They don't need a lot - a bed, a room, a dresser maybe? Even a small one? Again, a DM here with non-Fedi contact info, or requesting mine, will serve, or again Signal at oldladyplays.11
My other tasks I can accomplish by other means, but those two I could really use help with.
#Kamloops #TransMutualAid

2025-07-24 22:05:30 GMT

A thought about public transit.
Why do we have to pay for it?
We built it. It was our tax money and our labour and our commonly-held land. The buses and trains we bought, we paid for. The people who drive them? We pay that.
So why do we charge people to use it?
We don't charge road users to use the roads. "We pay for them," the drivers say. "So do we pay for them," say I. "We have to have insurance!" "So do transit vehicles."
"We have to pay for our go-juice of choice!" "Us too."
"We have to pay to maintain our own vehicles." "Yep, that's a pain for us too."
So why, exactly, do we provide use of the roads free to people who have the money to have their own vehicle, but NOT to the people who *don't* have that money, or choose not to spend it on a car for all kinds of society-benefiting reasons?
It's ridiculous. In order to facilitate the fare collection, we have to have MORE POLICE in our lives, people going up and down the LRT trains, bothering people trying to journey, and writing expensive tickets if they find someone forgot to tap their card on the out-of-the-way pedestals for such. How many hundreds of thousands are we paying in the salary for that couple of dozen people? Do we come even CLOSE to recovering that money by catching so-called "fare cheats"? No. Nothing like it.
It's a big ripoff, in favour of individual car use, and allows them to underfund our public transit so that it can take me an hour and a quarter to get to an appointment a private vehicle could reach in fifteen minutes, because it's about five km from my apartment. But in our rattletrap system, that's 3 buses.
This kind of thinking is burning our planet and our people alive. And still we hem and haw about whether it's worth the expenditure, and make it easy for people to live 100+km from their place of work - and yet still attend every day.
Madness!

2025-07-24 05:12:24 GMT

Okay, this is going to piss me off but good.
Brigitte Macron is NOT being accused of being a man. That is a viciously transphobic thing to say. She has been "accused" of being a TRANS WOMAN. Which, I remind you, is not, in fact, illegal in France. So "accused" is doing a probably illegal amount of lifting there.
Now, she is *not* a trans woman. The kids she's borne make that pretty clear.
But those outlets saying "they're saying she's a MAN!" are sensationalising the case, *by throwing trans people under the bus*.
It's infuriating. Bad enough that Mme. Macron is out there saying that it was "devastating" to be called trans, like being trans is the worst possible thing in the world to be. She's a centre-right rich woman, so of course she's saying that.
But to have leftists out here saying "they're calling her a MAN!" is really on my tits.
Fucking STOP it. Assholes.

2025-07-20 17:52:14 GMT

I realised something this afternoon, in talking with a friend.
I have reached my limit of cis people telling me how to be trans. Or not to be trans. Or choosing what we're called. Or really having any kind of control over our lives at all, for any reason. I don't care if they're professional sexologists, or transvestigators, or whatever they're going to call cis people who colonise our space academically. Or doctors, or politicians, or anyone else, ever.
I'm done. Cis people, there's a bunch of ya I love, but I swear, the next cis person who tells me how to do trans is probably going to soon regret it, when the sharp side of my tongue has finished tearing them various new orifices, metaphorically speaking.
We get to choose what we call ourselves. Be it trans, nonbinary, hijra, two-spirit, travesti, ladyboy (kathoey), whatever someone identifies as. If they feel they have a claim on that label, it's no one else's place to tell them they haven't. Least of all cis people.
Magneto was right.

2025-07-18 06:46:18 GMT

https://globalnews.ca/news/11293173/united-states-deportation-non-binary/
#CanPoli #trans
So this story. My take.
2 years ago, I lodged petition e-4268, to the federal government, requesting that they suspend the Safe Third Country agreement for the US and UK, because it was clear that trans and nonbinary people were under oppressive attack by both countries.
We gathered 167k signatures, the third highest number in Canadian Parliamentary history (at the time). The government responded that "Look, we have a Safe Third Country Agreement, we can't violate it, they're designated, and besides, we already do this."
I checked. They do it, alright. 640 applicants in eight years. TWO granted.
So...petition failed.
And here we are, two years and a couple of months later, and now a federal court Judge (and bless her, she's Indigenous, Canada's (shamefully) first Indigenous judge on the federal court) has said, "Yes, you were right, this immigration officer who decided to deport this person had clearly failed to take into account the current status of anti-LGBTQ repression in the US. And the government needs to quickly revisit the Safe Third Country Agreement, to see whether it should be given an exemption for trans and nonbinary people."
So. If the government appeals, it will take months for this to be resolved. Probably, if usual timelines hold, into next year. That's important to note.
And then the government will, almost certainly, have to decide what to do. Publicly. They will either have to produce evidence that trans and nonbinary people are safe in the US (which is like saying "prove that the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny aren't having an affair", and equally as likely), or accept the court's recommendation and carve out an exemption for trans and nonbinary people in the S3CA.
1/2

2025-07-15 20:05:23 GMT

Was watching video of the MAGA Meltdown about the Epstein files, taking a little bath in the Schadenfreude, when I came across one video in particular. And it got me thinking.
The speaker was a young woman. I recognised her immediately, of course, as any trans person in the US probably would, she's Riley Gaines, that Very Important Swimmer, who came fifth one time in that race, tied with Lia Thomas?
And I thought, wow, what a great grift. I mean, you're a mediocre university-level swimmer, right? You're never going anywhere in the sport, you don't win events, and so when uni comes to an end, you'll go and get a job like everyone else and just drudge your way through life.
But no! She came FIFTH that one time! And the fifth-place she got was STOLEN FROM HER by a TRANS WOMAN who's REALLY A MAN and is FAR TOO DANGEROUS AND PHYSICALLY OVERWHELMING for poor cis women swimmers! PROVEN by her finishing (checks notes)...also fifth. Behind four other cis women. Hmm.
But now, voila! See her shiny new career? Making well-compensated "speeches" at conservative hate rallies, bemoaning that ruinous trans woman and how she ruined everything for her.
Of course, Thomas did no such thing. She *also* finished fifth. Both got medals, and were listed as fifth. If Lia Thomas weren't there, Gaines would have finished...fifth. Which they were. She didn't get moved down a spot. She wasn't denied anything.
She simply had to share.
And this OUTRAGE was sufficient to earn her a multi-year speaking career as a professional victim of the EVIL TRANSES.
Just in case you needed a stunningly clear example of how the right-wing outrage machine works. She went from being a fifth-place middle-talent swimmer, to being a well-paid C-List celebrity in the Bigotsphere. She will live comfortably for years on her weaponising of her (checks notes) complete lack of harm in that race.
Astroturf victimhood as business model.

2025-07-14 17:23:23 GMT

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Oh, excellent. No chance that goes badly wrong. "Grok, is it a good idea to bomb Iran?"
"Hey, call me Adolf. We're friends, right? Yes, it's always a great idea to bomb Iran. If you haven't done it recently, people will think you're a weak woke untermensch. Obviously you should obliterate them.
"Do you have any of those nuclear weapons? They'd be great for this."
Et c..

2025-07-13 23:26:54 GMT

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Y'all...in the US and Canada, you need to read the thread i'm replying to. If you're interested in just outcomes...read this thread. If you consume food...read this thread.
Gonna blow your mind totally: we've been systematically lied to by Big Ag and farm owners. I know, imagine, a huge capitalist industry lying to its consumers? Unpossible, right?
But it's true. OP has receipts. Go learn why food is expensive, and wages for food growers and pickers are cheap (hint: follow the money).
Seriously. Best thread I've read here this *year*.
EDIT: https://mastodon.online/@sarahtaber/114848425437909616

2025-07-12 12:51:43 GMT

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Okay, my friends. This one is a long-term investment. My friend imp is a trans indie gamedev in Zimbabwe. She'd like to go to a gamedev con? I think? and needs to raise some money.
It's a valuable chance for a Black trans artist to get her voice heard in predominantly white spaces (yes, even in Africa). It doesn't have to take much from any of us. But I bet together we could raise this for her, and help improve the indie game space with games from a wider selection of developers, with backgrounds that get little attention or capital generally.
Help a sister out, please? Check out the post above for a link to ko-fi.
Thank you, my loves. I know you'll come through at least some. :)
@npub1gnl…nvkm

2025-07-11 05:13:45 GMT

We need to work on our legal system.
I've heard WAY too many people who simply know better saying things like "well, this is an 'act of god'" about flash flooding.
No. It is not. And we need to fix the law to get rid of that ridiculous ancient construct. There are no "acts of god", according to the law, or there shouldn't be. I have freedom of religion. How do I have that if my insurance company can say "act of god" and I'm not allowed to collect on the insurance? When I acknowledge no such entity?
Flash floods, wildfires, mudslides, polar vortices, all of this. None of it is an "act of god". They're all acts which are the direct consequence of HUMAN BEHAVIOUR.
We have to stop allowing people to say "oh, well, sky daddy did it" and shrugging when it comes to helping people live through climate change.
Time we bloody well grew up.

2025-07-10 00:06:03 GMT

One of the things I often say when I help someone is, "pay it forward when you can."
And I want to just open that tin up a little, and have a peek inside, because I think it's more sneaky good than people think it is.
So, for those who haven't encountered it before, the idea is that if I help you, but there's nothing I need from you in return, then you feel a debt. Pay it forward says "Your debt is to our shared community." And it means you can pay off that debt whenever you have the means, *even if the original favour came from someone no longer around.*
In this way, this behaviour sneaks in community building in a long-term way. Because while I'm only one elder among a few here, doing my best to be a help to as many as need me, the odds that any of these people I'm helping will be in a position to help with something I need is rather slim. For one thing, the odds are good that my remaining best-before time is about 30 years. In the scheme of things, when many of my friends are in their 20s and 30s, this means I may well be gone when they are in a place to help the way I have. And I won't need the help anyway.
But if they all remember to pay it forward...then they in turn create a generation that owes them a debt of gratitude. Which makes them want to give back.
And slowly, a community grows, that supports one another the way they were supported earlier.
So when I say that, I'm not just tossing a slogan at you without thought. I'm telling you my piece of how we make a community for our people. Take that piece, and use it when you build something for our community. And so on.
Y'all are my people. Just as I am your people. And if we work together, we can only get stronger as a group, a bouquet of identities, and as a community.

2025-07-06 17:49:47 GMT

Hey! If you're looking for an absolute firehose of good opinion and analysis, why aren't you following @npub18x7…p6e7? She's wikkid smaht, her politics are awesome, she's comfortably multilingual...and she posts or boosts about 70,000 times a day. I think. I've never tried to count.

2025-06-23 15:54:58 GMT

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Oh, yeah, I figured the containers would be used for Operation Spiderweb-style attacks, only much easier ones, since they have an open society to attack, one which sells guns, ammunition, and drones to anyone with the money. Just imagine the havoc at, say, a big football game? Or a Pride festival? Or any large gathering anywhere ever?
Trump has no imagination at all. There's no way he's considered any of this as a possibility.

2025-06-23 15:26:56 GMT

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Interesting...I don't even think they need to be able to load it onto a missile.
Imagine. They normalise relations. Wait...three years, maybe. Persians have long memories. They're still mad at the Macedonians.
Take the 60% bomb. Put it into a large, lead-lined box. Weld the box to the bottom of the oil hold on a supertanker.
Fill the supertanker with oil, which you can now sell because your nuclear program is gone. And sail it blithely away to...where? Houston for refining, maybe? Or the port of LA for transshipment by rail?
Anyway, either way, ship safely docked in US port, attached to major city.
What are the chances that device is found before she go kapow? And how hard has Iran ever found it to find those who would take martyrdom as a prize?
It's way better than an ICBM. Those are noisy and very visible when they are launched.
Who looks closely at an oil supertanker?

2025-06-23 14:26:13 GMT

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Yeah, that is a possibility. And if they wanted to, Russia could certainly finish enriching it for them, even.
Sneaky. Risky. Putin's not the most trustworthy fellow. And he's not done *anything* to back up his "ally" since they were attacked. And Russia might not want a nuclear-armed Iran on their border. But it would certainly bring Iran in as a virtual vassal state, which Putin likes.
Hmm. I'll have to spend some time gaming this out in my head.

2025-06-23 13:48:50 GMT

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You are awesome. Thanks so much. That puts me back on much firmer ground with my knowledge base. I can see the paths forward that they can take now, and they're a lot less scary short-term.
I still don't see how Iran chooses to negotiate with Trump, given how he's behaved toward them - tearing up the JCPOA in 2018, and then luring them into diplomatic talks only to bomb them severely two days into his "two week" waiting period.
But I can figure that out from there.

2025-06-23 13:42:15 GMT

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Okay, thanks. So if they're somehow gonna conceal it, then they must have a pocket underground reactor somewhere, and a vast unseeable place that somehow doesn't attract attention when it suddenly bursts into life with trucks and construction materials.
IOW, that's pretty damned unlikely. That's really really helpful, thanks. I now love you forever, because you showed me the place where I was wrong in my post the other day, and I promised to love forever the person who did that. Which is fine, you're awesome, I'm okay with being in the Cult of the Rooster.
(that post: https://wargamers.social/@oldladyplays/114726716311257759)
I didn't understand the scale of enrichment needs. It's not something I could have known, but it's something that interrupts my chain of logic, and makes me WRONG. And I really, *REALLY* wanted to be wrong.
Thank you. Deeply and genuinely.

2025-06-23 13:24:03 GMT

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Really appreciate your writing on this, sister, it helps me a lot in trying to understand and predict what's coming.
Two questions:
1) Do you have a thought on how long it might take them to build enough centrifuges to make enrichment viable again?
I mean, it makes sense for them to be doing their best to reach it as fast as possible, because, y'know, duh, nuclear states don't get invaded. It'd be a great boon to have some concept of how long it might take to rebuild the capacity.
2) Also, is it possible that they could do a distributed version of an enrichment facility? How big is the minimum size for the smallest facility you could imagine? Would that help them evade detection possibly? My understanding is that the tells for satellite intel are big energy use and a sizable facility needed.

2025-06-21 14:41:08 GMT

Wanna make one thing perfectly clear.
Capitalism? NEEDS workers. Without us, they have NOTHING. Without our labour to exploit, they have NOTHING. Without our willingness to work for them, they have NOTHING. No power.
Workers? Don't need billionaires. We just don't. Nothing about our lives is made better by there being wealth-hoarders greedily pursuing making Line Go Up. Nothing. All the innovations they pursue are about making their businesses more profitable. None are about making our lives better.
Wages don't go up. Benefits don't go up. Nothing for us is going up. But their wealth? That's going up faster than ever.
Time to start telling them no. Stop using their products. Stop giving them money. Buy local, where you can anymore. Support small business. Get off Facebook and Insta and Xitter and Bluesky and Threads and all the other money pits they've built to splash in.
We need to starve the fuckers out. Get them to retreat to their underground bunkers, and PAVE THEM UNDER.

2025-06-20 13:45:57 GMT

If you are someone who would go to Pride, and your local Pride celebration included a couple of early hours, in cooler temperatures with minimal environmental noise, maybe called "Quiet Pride", how would you respond?
Boosts very welcome, thank you. Answers or comments in not-English also explicitly welcome.

2025-06-15 22:18:20 GMT

Just a short one this time.
If you're tempted to say "this isn't the America I know" about troops in the streets hunting native-born Americans...may I introduce you to the concept of the enslavers' patrols? That'd be yer native-born government violence against yer native-born Americans. Or do you consider people kidnapped and forced to work for nothing, brutalised and killed, not to be worthy enough Americans to count?
Just...think a little about history...the history of what white people in government have done to Black people in America...before you pronounce it "so unlike us". You already know this stuff. Just keep it in your mind, huh?
(Canadians, don't get up on your high horse either - 1837, we stopped enslaving people. Didn't mean we started treating them better. Look up "Ontario Sundown Town", and think carefully the next time you hear Gordon Lightfoot sing "Sundown".)

2025-06-15 13:59:30 GMT

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Oh, my. I bet we could have a grand old time around a fire, swapping stories with a brew. Three people, from three countries, with common experiences.
It's the most dangerous realisation a soldier can have: the other guy I'm here to kill, is just like me. Thanks for the shared laugh. :)

2025-06-15 13:55:11 GMT

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That's a fair way to look at it. And I'm sure that played a part, I certainly felt that way when I was on parade. But I usually did my marching properly, because I wanted to display what my comrades and I could do. What discipline we could show. When we had a civilian audience, I'd make that extra effort. It was pride in my uniform.
I think that on a national stage, knowing they'd be on every news program...knowing that every veteran out there, from just about any military, would see their behaviour and know what they thought about this parade, and by their refusal to do the eyes left at the review stand, that they were specifically and deliberately disrespecting the person on the stand.
I just have a hard time believing they went to all that trouble, so many of them, risking insubordination charges...because they were miffed about a long weekend lost? It doesn't track for me.
But we can disagree, too. That's okay. :)

2025-06-15 13:49:00 GMT

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Heh, yeah, we do get into it. It's kinda fun, to be honest. Plus, if you're a jerk, you can "accidentally" repeatedly punch the shoulder blade of the person in front of you (ask me how I know).
That one cost *me* a week on shit detail. But I felt good when I hit him back.

2025-06-15 13:41:34 GMT

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This video is cued to a good spot to see basic Canadian drill in action. Single soldier, marching, coming to a stop. I would do this exactly the same, from my training 40 years ago. It's similar to US drill, but it's not the same. UK drill is also similar, but the foot stamp is much lower and taken more quickly.
https://youtu.be/Wd6cNV1ZxV4&t=10

2025-06-15 13:24:31 GMT

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That's news to my US vet friends. The most recent left the service two years ago, and they most certainly did drill. It's part of basic training, and it's used all the time in ordinary interactions. It's not taught for the reason it was taught in 1750, for sure, but it is absolutely taught.
Because it's a vehicle for introducing raw recruits into acting as a unit, following orders immediately and without hesitation, functioning cohesively with your foxhole buddies...it's a simple but very effective training technique on the path of creating soldiers out of civilians.
Similar rituals occur, for instance, in Japanese corporate culture, with mass fitness exercises and award ceremonies with organised standing, to enhance team feeling and corporate loyalty.
So when I see a whole unit marching completely out of step, in a formal unit parade? Followed by three out of four other units in the parade doing the same? That's no accident. We simply disagree, I'm afraid. Which is fine. :)

2025-06-15 11:33:57 GMT

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Oh, you're absolutely right. This is just about..knowledge of the methods of training and the automatic nature of drill movements once you learn them. You don't just discard them because you forgot.

2025-06-15 11:32:33 GMT

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I mean, just for clarification, I was thrown out of the Canadian Forces in an anti-queer purge 39 years ago. I have not drilled in all that time.
But I just checked. I can still do all the basic manoeuvres, and some of the more complex ones, right off the bat. Give me two minutes with an instructor, I'd have it all back. I remember the full procedure for dressing the line (a complex move where you make the line both straight and evenly spaced).
This is not something you just...forget. It's not something you have to focus on doing. It becomes automatic. That they're not doing it, while walking in formation, is a deliberate choice.

2025-06-15 11:26:09 GMT

Just saw video of Trumpy's Big Birthday Blowout.
I was completely stunned to see the soldiers marching. Because they weren't marching. They were out for a stroll. No one was walking in step, half of them didn't even do a basic eyes left move when they passed the review stand. That's one of the most simple drill evolutions there is, you literally just *turn your head* and keep marching.
I know, I'm not US military, but drill is drill. It's been the way it is for about 300 years, since the evolution of firearms as a major weapon of war, for old reasons that don't really matter, having to do with the accuracy of those early firearms. It's retained for its ability to build cohesion, discipline, and quick instinctive response to orders.
And drill has a look to it. This was not that.
For me, that was a signal: "We don't want to be here either. We're not with him. We're here because we're good troops, and we do what we're ordered when it's a legal order. But he can't make us respect him."
Just to interpret what you can see for yourselves on the video. A good half of those troops are *not* on Trump's side.
Any vets out there want to chime in?

2025-06-13 13:25:57 GMT

Question for y'all computer-toucher types.
I bought a couple of nice, relatively inexpensive curved monitors for my desktop PC. About six months ago. About two weeks ago, the stand for one of them basically exploded. The plastic shredded, and the monitor toppled (thankfully, forward onto the desk, undamaged).
Anyway, stands were cheap. Monitors are fine.
I want to get a better solution. I thought about those arms you can get to mount on the wall. The way my desk is situated, the wall is at my back. I prefer it this way, for several reasons that aren't relevant.
So, there is no wall behind my desk from my seated point of view. Well, there is, but it's three metres across the room.
So I need a mount that will attach to the desk itself. There is no lip on that side of the desk, so there is no way to attach a c-clamp mount.
The only solution I can see is a plate mount like used for a wall. What I can't find is a plate mount that can be used *backwards*. *Facing* the surface that will be the opposite direction from the monitors. Right? I need something that will screw into the back of my desk, and support two arms that hold the monitors above my desktop.
I cannot find such a thing. Does anyone know of a wall-mounted solution that might allow for a creative use of the mounting plate backward? Or the proper search term to find such a thing? "wall mount" has been useless, "desk mount" worse, and "plate mount" got me a bunch of horizontal plates supporting ordinary columns. I found one solution that would involve drilling through the desktop rather than the back of the desk, but it wouldn't be rotatable.
Does such a thing exist? Am I bound to just use a flat-plate dual arm through the desktop? Or individual (and metal) columns? I'm worried about the amount of desktop real estate I'd be losing if they were that far forward.
Help me, Fedi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!

2025-06-13 11:52:23 GMT

FYI: Calling a protest "a riot" is fascist behaviour. Protesters have a right to protest. It is in our Constitutions. The police do *not* have the right to stop them. That is blatantly the government restricting the right to free expression and the right to peaceably assemble.
So when the protesters are there, chanting and waving signs and otherwise doing what protesters do, IT IS THE POLICE WHO ARE IN THE WRONG. Their job is *not* to decide the demonstration is no longer "permitted". The right isn't something you can take away.
So when those police begin lobbing and shooting weapons at the protesters, THEY ARE THE ONES ACTING ILLEGALLY. They are literally the government not allowing people their rights. They are the redcoats here. They represent the King's tyrannical authority.
So never, ever call it a riot. A riot is an unreasoning mob, using violence to achieve their aims.
A protest that is attacked by police is "citizens taking up their right to self-defence when someone tries to violate their rights illegally."
Language matters here, folks. Don't accept their language. Call things what they are, not what they want you to think they are.
Also, "violence" against property is not violence. It is tortious, not criminal. Violence is what happens to *people*.

2025-06-12 18:53:17 GMT

If you're more bothered by the fact that some tiny amount of corporate property has been set ablaze than you are by the fact that the police you pay for are being sent to attack unarmed and peaceful protesters with chemical weapons, backed up by federally-mandated US troops fully armed for battle...
...You're just as fascist as they are.
No, the protesters are *not* instigating violence. They are being assaulted by police without authority to do so, having committed no criminal act, trampled by police horses, hit by police cars, shot by police bullets, and blinded and deafened by police grenades. Arrested without warrants for exercising long-established First Amendment-protected rights.
The media aren't showing you what's happening. They're showing you what will *excite you*. Enrage you. Bring you back to watch more. They are incentivised to maximise their profit by doing so.
The police are incentivised to attack you. They get to make splashy arrests and get big numbers, which makes police budgets Line Go Up. They are the ones being paid to be there. They are the ones starting the violence. So who, exactly, are the paid instigators here?
Please trust that your neighbours have not lost their minds. They see what is happening, and they're doing the only thing that can be done. They're standing up and saying "No. Not in my name."
That's not a crime. It's a civic duty.

2025-05-27 21:11:38 GMT

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What are ya, some kinda *good citizen* or sumthin? Greed not good enough for ya?
Good on ya. 😁

2025-05-25 14:20:30 GMT

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"How does one find the birth name of a trans person? How can one know the true name of a trans person? Here is a very useful link which will let you obtain this crucial information in a couple of clicks.
https://deadname.fr/
See how I fail at writing as an oppressive cis? Don't hesitate to share this widely, the goal is that the link arrives just when someone is really looking for this question's answer. "
(the page you arrive at says "certainly not".)
#trans

2025-05-19 16:55:10 GMT

I made the suggestion of #TransGEM and #GEM yesterday for a very good set of reasons, which i would like to make explicit.
1. I want trans people (meaning in this case "anyone not vibing with their canonical sex") to be seen as people seeking joy, rather than people seeking relief from misery. While i think the latter can be a common initial motivation, it frequently changes to joy-seeking once we discover what gender euphoria is.
2. I want cis people to see how ubiquitous and idiosyncratic trans expressions of gender euphoria are. How small they can be, and how large.
3. I want trans people who are hiding bc they don't see themselves as refugees from misery, to know they are as valid as any other trans person.
4. I want cis people to begin to recognise gender euphoria they.experience, so they can relate to us better.
5. I want everyone to see that trans lives, when supported and and being given space to just be, can be places of joy, so that families will no longer feel so much grief and/or fear when their trans loved ones reveal themselves.
So i strongly encourage my fellow trans and nonbinary and gendered-or-not-in-other-ways people to post to the hashtag. I encourage even more strongly that cis people follow it, and maybe even boost those that speak to you so your other cis friends will see them.
We know from long human history that the other is easy to demonize. That the best counter to this is humanization of that other. That is the goal of sharing our GEMs with each other.

2025-05-09 15:01:17 GMT

I've decided that instead of "deadname", which I like but has sort of negative connotations that I feel like I want to avoid, I'm going to refer to that name I once bore as an "appellation d'origine contrôlée", or "appcon" as I'll use it.
It means "a name for a thing that comes from a specific region", like champagne, or burgundy, or bologna.
Mine was a name that, thankfully, no one has ever claimed as a feminine name, nor has there ever been a movement to use it for girls. So if I define the region as "masculinity", it works perfectly. It wasn't right for me - I'm not from there. I don't have the right to call myself by that appellation controllée.
Somehow, it lets me hate my appcon a little less. It's a good enough name, I guess, for those who come from Masculinia. But I'm not from there.
#TransJoy

2025-05-03 04:56:00 GMT

If you'd told me when I was 14 that in 44 years, I'd be living a life where most of my friends are the smokingest hottest women I've ever known (and some are the most attractive men!), with whom I get to flirt and have fun and enjoy my life as a girl...I'd have cried my eyes out with sheer happiness.
So here I am, appreciating y'all, and shaking my head in wonder at the joy that is my life, lo these many years later.
#TransJoy #TransLife #Trans

2025-04-27 06:33:05 GMT

I'm going to stake out what will sound like a radical position, and make my argument for why it isn't at all radical, but common-sense response to a simple problem.
When someone decides to transition, the way it should go is, "I am doing this with my body, and if you don't like it, mind your business."
That's it. Then start hormones, if you want them. Change your name and your gender marker, if you want. Get surgeries if you want. Or not, to all of that.
Because gatekeeping is fundamentally immoral. On what basis does *anyone* claim the right to tell me what I can do or not do with MY body in MY one life?
Why? Because gender-affirming care is already fully legal in the US, everywhere.
For cis people.
You're a cis woman and want breast augmentation? Get in there and get cut, baby.
Erectile dysfunction? We have a range of drugs to help.
Vaginal dryness? Here's progesterone.
Low T? We got you, bud.
Losing your hair? Here's your finasteride.
We don't blink an eye at these obvious instances of gender-affirming care, because they're for cis people.
But try to get affirmed in a gender you weren't coerced into? Whoa! You'll need to see some GATEKEEPERS about that, you're not old enough to make that decision for yourself!
(note that reproductive care, on the other hand, is NOT available everywhere in the US)
It is nothing but transphobia, and if you back that system, you're doing a transphobic thing.
That means if a trans girl needs you to lie and say they always played with girly things because they're facing a gatekeeper, you lie your face off for them.
If a trans guy needs top surgery to feel right, but has to prove his gender, you can tell whatever comforting lies the gatekeeper needs to hear to soothe their wobbly guts.
It is not immoral to refuse to participate in an immoral system. It is, in fact, a moral imperative to fight against it.
Wanna be an ally? This is one way to help.

2025-04-20 11:57:38 GMT

Just for the record...
...have paid taxes
...have had jobs my whole life
...used to play football, baseball, and hockey
...wrote standup comic poetry
...have had several long-term relationships
...went to the bathroom unassisted this very morning, just like every time
First, autism is a spectrum. To make claims about all autistic people because you've met one is a pretty big logic error.
Second, autism isn't a disease, so it can't be an epidemic. Better surveillance of young humans has improved our detection abilities, and we catch it more readily than we used to.
Third, we should be accommodating the needs of autistic children, not trying to eliminate them.
The so-called search for the causes of autism is in fact an eliminationist goal: they want to find a way to wipe autistic people out. RFK Jr is like a Nazi "scientist" trying to find out what causes Jewishness: bigoted, wrong from the start, and evil.
#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD

2025-04-19 19:01:37 GMT

A thought for trans allies in this time:
You often ask us what you can do to help. Well, here's something you can do. Wear trans badges, buttons, pins, scarves, whatever you've got. Explicitly. I wanna see that blue and pink EVERYWHERE.
Because the more of you cis folk do that, the safer we will be in crowds and such. It will mean that wearing a badge of support for trans people doesn't necessarily out that person as trans.
"But wait," you're thinking maybe, "if I do that, people might think *I* am trans!"
Well, why is that a problem for you? Would you be offended by someone thinking you might be trans? Would you be scared? Welcome to our world.
This is your time, cis people. You were all ready to call yourselves allies when it didn't matter more than changing your PFP background. Now the rubber meets the road. We need you. We need your help to normalise our existence to other cis people. It could save lives.
If someone accuses you of being trans (imagine being *accused* of existing while trans?), don't deny it. Ask why it matters to them. Keep calm.
#LGBTQ #trans #allies

2025-04-03 11:31:16 GMT

Hello, my friends. I have a different request for aid. I have a trans friend who has just escaped the US, but she couldn't bring any of her stuff along, and she doesn't have anywhere to live.
She's in the region of Quebec City, so any resources we can find to help her would be valuable. Right now she's crashing temporarily with someone, but that can't last. She's waiting on a place in a shelter, but that will only last 3 months when it happens, and may be months yet.
So I'm looking for anyone who knows someone in the region who might be able to help, who has a room to spare while she gets on her feet. I can vouch for her, she's trustworthy and helpful, easy to get along with. I've known her two years. She needs to stay in the region if she's going to be in Canada, because her children live there (with her ex).
There's no money request on this one, just looking for help finding a place she can stay while she finds work and gets settled again.
Thank you. Boosts encouraged.

2025-02-11 20:31:47 GMT

For those who remember, about two years ago I put up a petition to the Government of Canada, which received 167k signatures, the third-highest total in Canadian parliamentary history. That petition requested that the government recognise the risk to trans people of the hate legislation being passed around the US and UK, and be willing to accept asylum requests from those countries.
They responded with indifference, saying that the US and UK were "safe third countries", and thus ineligible for refugee claims.
In the last couple of weeks, trans activist Fae Johnstone's Momentum Canada have started a new petition, not a governmental one this time (https://www.momentumcanada.net/pathways), requesting the same accommodation.
I wanted to say that we have once again a champion for that request, in the form of the great ally to our community, Mike Morrice of the Green Party. He spoke movingly in Parliament last time about the need for this move to be made, and I worked with him to try and lobby on Parliament Hill, without success.
For Canadians, I want to recommend you consider sending this petition link to your Member of Parliament. If they're supportive, they'll pass it on, and if they're not, they'll at least know we're coming in big numbers, and most importantly that YES, they do have trans-friendly constituents.
I'll be meeting with Mike next week to discuss next steps, but I wanted to give heads-up to those in the US feeling the fear: we're still fighting for your refuge here. Hold on to your hope. We'll exhaust every possibility.
This tool: https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/search
...will help you find your MP's contact information. Please be polite but firm in expressing your fears for our community members to the south, even if they're Tories. The more of us do this, if we can get it happening in every riding in the country, it could be very powerful.
#CanPol #TransAsylumNow

2025-01-24 12:40:25 GMT

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What's nastier, to me right now, is that I live in a twin-cities setup with a city named after the guy who invented those camps. I've been trying for years to get it changed. :/

2025-01-05 06:05:46 GMT

I was wondering something. "Let's ask Fedi," I thought to myself, and as usual, I thought, "what a good idea, Cait!" because I usually like my own ideas.
So. With the preamble that you may define trans as you will, and nonbinary as you will, I wondered this.
This being:
"Please answer this if you are trans or nonbinary. Please do not otherwise, unless you want to see the results (which option see below). The question is, 'were you in a gifted program when you were young?'"
You may define those terms as needed to make it make sense for your context. I'm considering (for my own needs) programs in which so-called "gifted" kids were brought together to be given enhanced learning opportunities. If you feel that applies, then say yes, whether they used the term "gifted" or not.
ACK! I can only have four options on this installation of Fedi software. Sorry for the cis people, I'll try and remember to boost the poll after it's done, so you can see the results too.

2024-12-24 15:03:38 GMT

When I was in university, I did my fourth-year undergrad thesis on Russian literature. Specifically, the Image of the Machine in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary Russian Utopias and Dystopias.
A real page-turner, I assure you. And no, before you ask, I don't have a copy. And I'm not giving out my doxx so y'all can search my university for it under my deadname. If it were online, which I'm quite sure it is not.
Anyway, the point I came to was this: in the pre-revolutionary work, the image of the machine was as humanity's humble servant, freeing us to become as gods with our leisure time. In post-revolutionary work, the machine had evolved into the master, enslaving people to its needs for maintenance and supply.
And I got into some stuff about the psychology of Russians before and after the revolution as measured at the time (and those books were fun to locate!). That's not really relevant to today's discussion, so I'll leave it aside.
This obviously relates to my feelings about the current state of AI. We are living in what can reasonably be described as a dystopic present. And fittingly, the machine is become our master. We work free for its supply, and willingly sacrifice the planet and our own ability to survive to maintain it.
Is this a manifesto? In some ways, maybe. But it's really time that we thought about what we're doing, and what we want to do about it. Because the only way this stops is by us doing something about it. And the only power we have is our willingness to use the tools that corporations dangle in front of us to distract us while they rifle our pockets for loose data.
Or our unwillingness.
So be unwilling. Be noncompliant. We don't have to break laws to grind the machine down. We just have to refuse to feed it.

2024-12-24 14:33:58 GMT

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Make it a home for Zines. Look for good zines in the 'verse, and slap 'em up on the website. PDFs are a great simple way to do so. Allow creators of previous zines to make accounts on the site, and submit new ones for review (to help weed out attackers). They're such a great way to spread information, and it'd be great to have a way to propagate them through the community. As the site grows, get into tagging the zines with keywords, to enable search more effectively. It's not going to make money, but it shouldn't be a tonne of work for a few people either.
That's what I'd do.

2024-12-24 14:23:03 GMT

#StopUsingAI #RefuseToChooseAI
Alright, it's time someone said it directly. This AI bullshit is getting out of hand. We need to start working together and saying NO.
Any time someone tries to implement AI into your daily life, refuse. Do not comply. If we all did this, companies would realise it's costing them too much to play around with this terrible technology, and it'll get put away some until it's worth having. That may be someday, but LLMs are not that day.
I went to my doctor's recently, and she handed me a sheet telling me that they were using AI to record interviews, so they could use it to transcribe the interview. I asked if I could opt out, because it didn't say I could on the sheet.
Turns out I can, opt out I mean, and I did. She made some noise about wanting to spend more time with her family, but okay, with a big sigh. And I'm thinking, "you're a *doctor*. If you want more time off, take more time off."
And I've been doing this ever since. I turn off every AI that they shove into the software I use.
Why do I do this? Because their AIs are being used to scrape data for their companies. For free. All they have to do is come up with something that will save people a few dollars, and those people will jump in and use it "for free", not knowing the price is being paid by the patients, rather than them.
Because here's the thing: if they want my data, they can fucking PAY me for it. Why the hell should they get to just steal my data from me via my doctor, and make money off it without cutting me in? It's obscene, we wouldn't put up with it anywhere else, and we shouldn't here.
As long as generative AIs are based on theft as a business model, we need to eschew them completely.
ETA: Some excellent points being made in the comments about other reasons why these current AI are not what we want. I'm not opposed to the development of AI - I'm opposed to its too-early deployment.

2024-10-13 12:45:30 GMT

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With respect, I find it hard to celebrate the accomplishments funded by the man who is also funding huge anti-trans organizations with millions of dollars. I get that it's good from a space tech POV, but Apartheid Clyde is the one making all the money off this, and that makes me certain he'll use it for nefarious ends.

2024-06-30 06:09:50 GMT

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Not sure about vocabulary, but in terms of phonetics there's the two-syllable "on" that is pretty characteristic.