If You Ain't Makin' Waves, You Ain't Kickin' Hard Enough

Gender Census 2025 - Signal Boost

2025-08-03T20:51:41Z

Direct link to the survey and a description below; the Gender Census website has more info, including a FAQ. Please share widely, anywhere that nonbinary/genderqueer/nth gender/etc folks might be. You are welcome to gank this post for the purpose.

From the census start page:

'Welcome to the twelfth annual gender census!

I'll start by making it as clear as possible who's invited to take part.

According to one model of gender called the "gender binary", everyone fits tidily into one of these categories:
- Woman/girl - all the time, solely, and completely (may be cisgender or transgender for the purposes of this survey)
- Man/boy - all the time, solely, and completely (may be cisgender or transgender for the purposes of this survey)

This survey intends to collect information about everyone who DOESN'T fit into this system. Anyone who doesn't feel like they fit into one of these two boxes is invited to participate. There are no geographical restrictions.

If you hesitate or struggle to place yourself into just one of the two boxes, or if you know for sure that these boxes were not made for you, please do continue!'

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A Friend in Need

2024-08-24T09:32:05Z

My family-of-choice brother Max is in a bind. His situation tends to be varying levels of precarious most of the time, since he's an AuDHD trans man with PTSD trying to survive in Seattle, but this time 'precarious' is an understatement.

He recently - like, mere days ago - moved from a (literal!) fleabag hotel into shared accommodations with a roommate who turns out to be very toxic, had deceived him about the details of the living arrangement, and is now giving him ten days (from yesterday) to move elsewhere, with not a cent of the rent/SD he paid her being returned. (She says she'll refund him later 'as a gesture of trust', a phrase that, in this context, makes little sense except as a means of guilting him into not insisting on a refund.)

That leaves him with basically nothing but pocket lint with which to try to find alternate accommodation and attempt to regain some degree of stability in his situation, since he's not currently employed.

I don't have the wherewithal to cover even a tiny fraction of what he needs - but then it occurred to me, I can crowdsource for him. So I am. Those who are willing, and able, to help out, every bit is appreciated, whether monetary, or in the form of Seattle-area leads on either accommodation or employment.

He does tarot and other sorts of divination via his website at Bijou Fortune, if you prefer to get something in return for your contribution, or can be donated to via his Venmo or his Paypal.

Comment if you have any leads or other potentially-useful info, or questions (though prying into his details to determine if he's 'worthy' is not welcome).

Please feel free to share widely - here are links to my Xwitter, Bluesky, Mastodon, and Tumblr posts, if you're on any of those platforms and want to repost.

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Other places to find me

2023-08-19T14:08:56Z

While I have not (yet) burned my account on ex-Twitter to the ground and salted the earth, I do want to be able to point my followers from that site to where else I can be found. Thus, making this post, so that I can post a link to it.

Mastodon: go here, or c&p (and remove the .) @.SunflowerP@wandering.shop

Bluesky: go here.

I am not averse to providing invites to folks I like interacting with, if and when I have them.

(This post is a WIP.)

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Gender Census 2022 - Signal Boost

2022-07-13T23:09:51Z

After several months of delays (for a variety of reasons), Cassian has opened the 2022 Gender Census.

Direct link to the survey and a description below; the Gender Census website has more info, including a FAQ. Please share widely, anywhere that nonbinary/genderqueer/nth gender/etc folks might be. You are welcome to gank this post for the purpose.

From the census start page:

'Welcome to the ninth annual gender census!

I'll start by making it as clear as possible who's invited to take part.

Most people fit tidily into one of these categories:
- Woman/girl - all the time, solely, and completely (may be cisgender or transgender)
- Man/boy - all the time, solely, and completely (may be cisgender or transgender)

This survey intends to collect information about everyone who DOESN'T fit into this system. Anyone who doesn't feel like they fit into one of these two boxes is invited to participate. There are no geographical restrictions.

If you hesitate or struggle to place yourself into just one of the two boxes, or if you know for sure that these boxes were not made for you, please do continue!'

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Gender Census 2021 - Signal Boost

2021-02-18T14:10:56Z

The eighth annual gender census (run by Cassian Lodge of 'Poly in Pictures' fame-in-some-circles) is open.

Direct link to the survey and a description below; the Gender Census website has more info, including a FAQ. Please share widely, anywhere that nonbinary/genderqueer/nth gender/etc folks might be - Cassian is especially interested in getting more responses from older NB/GQ people. You are welcome to gank this post for the purpose.

From the census start page:

'Welcome to the eighth annual gender census!

I'll start by making it as clear as possible who's invited to take part.

Most people fit tidily into one of these categories:
- Woman/girl - all the time, solely, and completely (may be cisgender or transgender)
- Man/boy - all the time, solely, and completely (may be cisgender or transgender)

This survey intends to collect information about everyone who DOESN'T fit into this system. Anyone who doesn't feel like they fit into one of these two boxes is invited to participate. There are no geographical restrictions.

If you hesitate or struggle to place yourself into just one of the two boxes, or if you know for sure that these boxes were not made for you, please do continue!'

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Adult Privilege - A Signal Boost

2009-11-29T20:42:07Z

One of the things I've long wanted to post about, but that, when I try, I usually get too angry to type, are the indignities that adults impose on children and teens, ostensibly "for their own good", but all too often simply because they see kids/teens not as people, but as things that must be tightly controlled. (Let's not forget just how many other groups have been marginalized because they were seen as things that must be tightly controlled.)

I'm still not, I think, able to construct a proper post, though there's been quite a few conversations going on about the subject lately; I'm hoping that reading them (at time of posting, I've read some but not all) will help me process the rage and sort my thoughts.

Meanwhile, a signal boost: elf has compiled some linkspam, which makes it much easier to find the main convos.

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A very quick followup about "cis"

2009-07-26T21:51:16Z

If I had found eftychia's post Semantics, Gender, and 'Cis' before I wrote my own "Cis" is not a pejorative", I'd have saved myself a lot of writing - what I attempted to say, dglenn says far, far better.

This oughta be a longer followup than it is; I've run across a number of other excellent posts on the subject out in the wider blogosphere. But I've had enough trouble juggling time and spoons to even get to this much of one.

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"Cis" is not a pejorative

2009-07-05T16:41:45Z

I am a cis woman. That is, my gender identity[1] and my genes/hormones/plumbing/etc match up, as female. That matchup is a privilege.

The adjective[2] "cis" was coined because there are occasions when it's necessary to distinguish those who have such a match-up from those who don't (trans people/women/men). It is not inherently a pejorative term (though it can be used pejoratively, as can most words); it's simply the Latin antonym of "trans".

There are, however, people who have the privilege of identity/biology matchup who find it horribly offensive (GG the Undead takes note here of a particularly massive and trainwrecky instance [see also Questioning Transphobia's post, while I'm not posting specifically about that debacle, was what inspired me to quit waiting for that long-delayed shipment of Round Tuits and damned well post these thoughts). Most of the objections I've seen are about like the first one quoted at QT, which can be summarized as, "But I don't like it!", or are even less coherent.

As far as I can tell, the "offense" here is that the offended folks feel like they've lost the privilege of being Unmarked Case. That's pure "puff" privilege, all style and no substance; the most substantial thing lost is their sense of being "normal", "not one of the freaks". Their sense of it, mind you; the world is not suddenly looking at them askance. Most of the time, there's no need at all to subdivide the category "woman" (or "man") into cis women and trans women (or cis men and trans men); those folks objecting to "cis" aren't being asked to constantly and consistently identify themselves as a subclass of the category. If that were the case, they might have a point - the exact same point as those trans women and men who object to being asked to specify their transness whether it's relevant or not.

When trans folk and their allies use the adjective "cis", the intent is to construct a frame in which, when subdivision of categories is relevant to the discourse, each subcategory is adjectivally distinguished, and when subdivision is not relevant, no distinguishing adjectives are required. I've never heard an objection to "cis" that argued that all distinguishing adjectives are offensive[3], or offensive-when-irrelevant; if they touch on that at all, it's to champion the "right" of trans folk to identify by their chosen term "trans" - completely eliding that it's an identifier chosen for those instances of relevance. "Trans woman/man" is not[4] an identity in place of woman/man, it's an identity in place of terms habitually and traditionally used derogatorily.

No, the objection is that "cis" in particular is offensive. Taking again the first objector quoted in the QT post linked above, it's because cis people didn't make it up themselves. Granted, it's not put like that, it's expressed as not being able to choose the identity-term - well, no more did trans people; they selected the least-baggage-laden of a selection of terms imposed by the (cis-defaultive) cultural mainstream. Note that the objector doesn't offer an alternative of any kind, nor any examples of "cis" being used derogatorily; basically, he's just offended because other people are marking his ~~privilege baggage~~case, dammit, it's his to mark, but he's not gonna.

And that's one of the most coherent, cogent, and tightly-reasoned arguments I've read about the offensiveness of "cis": it's insulting because it explicitly points out privilege.

If that's the most "offensively" that your privilege is ever called out, you have no gripe coming.

[1] In a binary model. Get beyond the binary, and it gets complicated.

[2] Adjective, rather than prefix, because either "cis" or "trans" used as a prefix has stronger connotations of being outside the unmarked-case category. This may seem trivial, but the first time I went to type "ciswoman" to identify myself, it smacked me upside the head - yep, it does matter.

[3] In a post-transphobic world, we wouldn't need the distinguishing adjectives. This is not that world, so anyone advocating eliminating both "trans" and "cis" is either criminally naive, or disingenuously trying to sweep transphobia under the rug.

[4] Some individual trans folk have a strong identity with the "trans" adjective, and prefer "trans woman/man" to unmodified "woman/man".

Note on commenting: Transphobia in comments will be called out, if not by me then by others, but will only be deleted if there's no content of substance or if it's especially nasty - as a general principle, I prefer public disagreement, unto mocking if it seems apropos, to cleaning up and thus concealing misdeeds. If you're a cis person with privilege baggage, you'd best hope I get to it before my trans* readers do; I'm merely snarkastic and scalpel-tongued, they are used to fighting for their lives.

ETA: That includes calling me out on anything I've screwed up here.

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Tools and Symbols of Oppression

2009-06-29T02:06:02Z

There's been some discussion lately up here in the Great White North - or at any rate in the pages of the less-awful of my local print newspapers, The Calgary Herald - about the possibility of banning burqas. One Herald columnist, Licia Corbella, wrote that No sane, free person would choose to wear a burka. I can't say I'm impressed with that title (which is also the concluding line); it's either an example of the No True Scotsman logical fallacy, or an indirect reference to the Marxist-associated concept of false consciousness (or both; they're not wholly mutually exclusive), and whiffs of mental-health ablism.

Of course, this is op-ed rhetoric, not Socratic debate; its purpose is to draw attention - to that end, logical fallacies and oppressive *isms are considered a feature, not a bug. So I'll leave aside the business-as-usual, and get to the meat of the piece.

There's a great deal stated or suggested in there that I'm very much onside with. Most particularly, that the burqa is both a tool of oppression, and a very powerful symbol of oppression. But I'm very bothered by the underlying implication that legislative prohibition of the tool/symbol is a solution. Eliminate the tool, the means of oppression, and those who wish to oppress will find other means; eliminate the symbol, and other symbols will arise to take its place, or the oppression will be made less visible. If the goal is to eliminate the oppression, then - sooner or later - the oppression itself is what must be addressed.

Over at Tiger Beatdown a couple of weeks ago, Sady posted a great piece, Dear Andrea Dworkin. (Bear with me here; this isn't a non sequiteur or a topic change.) The comment thread, though long, is also very much worth a read. Naturally, since Sady is talking about what she doesn't like, and what she disagrees with (as well as what she does like and/or agree with) in Dworkin's writing, defenders of Dworkin have emerged to speak their minds; along with the predictable Militant Radfems (the ones who frequently lead me to scratch my head and ponder, "and that's radical how?") there are what appear to be some honest-to-Shulamith radical feminists. And there is engagement. More-or-less civil engagement - there's some heat, but quite a bit of light. If you yearn (as I do) to see feminists of different stripes actually discussing their disagreements, with arguments of substance rather than virulent invective, it's not perfect, but it's about as good as it gets (IME).

If you're so inclined, you can go check it out right now - this post will still be here when you get back. But you can easily save it for later (or choose to skip it; I think it's worth reading, but that's an opinion, not an injunction); I'm not directly addressing anything in it here.

As I was reading the interwoven discussions, it dawned on me that much of the substance of Dworkin and of Dworkin-related discourse is (see, I told you it was relevant) the ways in which expressions of sexuality can be tools and symbols of patriarchal oppression. (And of other manifestations of kyriarchy as well, but getting into that would make a much longer post.) Sometimes this gets parsed in terms of particular acts and objects - most famously, fellatio and pornography (with a side order of BDSM - mention of which gives me a chance to use an icon I haven't yet had opportunity to, ahem, show off).

There are those - not always the same "those", though I expect there's a good bit of overlap - who argue that fellatio is always an unfeminist, or even outright anti-feminist, act; that the very concept of pornography is a tool of oppression; that BDSM necessarily and by its nature reifies the power imbalances of patriarchy. It's rare to see them argued without a significant component of either personal squick or false assumptions on the part of the arguer, but it can be done.

Not in a way that's convincing to me, though. Such arguments, constructed from accurate information about the practices and without universalizing one's personal reactions, are legitimate and useful for examining the ways in which these things, through being used to oppress, have become imbued with oppression, and how we can go about disentangling them. They are neither legitimate nor useful when used simply to make prohibitive declarations about others' actions.

Prohibiting fellatio or porn or BDSM - or even all three - won't overthrow the patriarchy; all it does is take those forms of sexual expression off the table. Those choices won't be available, but the patriarchal oppression will still be there, finding new ways to oppress.

If, once we eliminate patriarchal oppression, there are no women who wish to engage in those practices (doesn't strike me as probable, but I could be wrong), it'll be unnecessary to prohibit them; if there are still women who wish to engage in those practices, it'll be an act of full agency.

It seems more probable to me that, with full agency and without the pressures of oppression, there will be no woman who chooses to meet the requirements of hijab by wearing a burqa. But if there are, that choice must be available to her, or all our fine words about choice and agency are merely disguises for a different form of oppression, a different manifestation of kyriarchy.

The tools and symbols are - at most - symptoms, not causes, I would far rather support women's full, free agency by ensuring that no woman ever has to give a blow job, or wear a burqa, or any of thousands of other things, except by her own, uncoerced and unpressured, choice. Removing choices from the table - that's what oppressors do.

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No, Actually, Transmisogyny Isn't Funny

2009-06-27T16:20:57Z

Just a quick heads-up here about a particularly nasty siteful of transmisogynistic "humor" billing itself as "Tranny Alert". I don't want a direct link to it on here, so I'll point you to GLAAD's statement about it, and to gudbuytjane's Call to Action, where you can get the revolting details and find links to check out the site itself or to complain to Blogger where they're hosted.

It is of course de rigeur for those committing a human-rights Fail to at some point issue the "but it's just a joke" disclaimer, and these folks Twittered theirs in one of its most classic distancing/projecting forms: ""Wow people really need to get a fucking sense of humor."

That's true. Some people do need to get a fucking (or at any rate adult) sense of humor. Like the jeans they wore when they were eight, the point-and-laugh senses of ha-ha they had when they were eight NO LONGER FIT WELL ENOUGH TO COVER THEIR ASSES.

UPDATE: And it's down - I've checked a couple of times, several hours apart (and enjoyed thumbing my nose at the 404-error page I get instead), so it seems it's properly gone, not just having a hiccup.

Not to say they won't re-start it elsewhere once they think the heat has died down; the sort of asshats who don't get what's wrong with something like this in the first place aren't likely to experience a sudden epiphany. But it looks like this (one, tiny) battle has been won, even though there's still a hell of a lot of war left.

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A useful thing

2009-05-31T14:39:06Z

I went to my OpenID's profile page, as part of doing the necessary to get it properly set up, and found in its Circle an LJ friend that I didn't know had started a DW account. I'll have to make a habit of checking there at intervals.

If I'd stopped and thought it through, this'd probably have been obvious. I didn't, though, so it wasn't; and I figured I might as well remark about it since others might also not think of it.

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More Moving In

2009-05-17T20:52:20Z

The moving van arrived with the rest of my stuff! (Translation: successful importation of the LJ contents I hadn't already cut&pasted.)

Why, yes, I do like it here. Especially, I like that I'm not feeling the occasional cold draft of user-hostility.

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Moving In

2009-05-17T09:55:45Z

Okay, here I am. Let's see... I think I'll put the couch along that wall, Coffee table in front of it, of course; end table with a lamp next to it; bookcases along the opposite wall (dang it, even when you have enough bookcases - a transitory state - you don't have enough space for them all)... hang the curtains, and the pictures. Yep, that'll do to get on with.

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