Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

I'm wondering where I can find the UK transmasc organizing. (It is probably happening on reddit or bluesky or something that I don't have an account on, I know, sigh.)

Trans mascs/men's specific oppression under the supreme court ruling should be highlighted for itself, not in relation to trans women/fems' oppression, like as an abstract "beards in ladies loos" threat/stunt. (I'm sympathetic to the desire to "gotcha" the incoherent bigotry, but there are transmascs (yes even ones growing facial hair) who are already using the ladies' room because that's the way their safety calculations end up. Also I don't love the idea that beards or any other symbol of masculinity is inherently antithetical to, or exclusive of, femininity.)

Not only do TERFs talk about their "sisters" and "daughters" being swayed into "mutilating their bodies by gender ideology," books discussing this have been international bestsellers. Transphobic writers like Jesse Singal have made a career from anti-transmasculinity as well as transmisogyny.

One of the ways the UKSC ruling seems incoherent (from what I understand, I haven't read it all) is that while it says trans women should be excluded from women's spaces, it also says trans men should be excluded from women's spaces because of the "masculinising" effects of the testosterone we are all presumed to take. (This isn't surprising at least -- the TERFery that informed the decision takes a zero tolerance approach to testosterone -- but it never gets less baffling.)

This leaves trans men/mascs in a very weird position.

For example, can transmascs be removed from women's refuges if they take testosterone because it might "trigger" "survivors" (a status that of course no transmasc person could have, in this worldview)...? And of course I agree that a women's refuge isn't a great place for a transmasc person! But neither can we be left to just fend for ourselves around domestic violence.

A friend joked that if we can't be held in either male or female prison populations does this mean we can't be jailed, but their partner pointed out that transmasc people would likely just be held in solitary confinement.

Anyway. It occurred to me that most of the trans community I have -- certainly the activisty part -- is transfem, so before and after yesterday's protest I made some efforts to find both more trans advocacy and more transmasc community.

I'm in more WhatsApp groups and Discord servers now (sigh...especially because discord has found a new way to be inaccessible for me today! I literally can't scroll downwards!q), but I have plans to join some in-person gatherings this week too.

Something about this description of the upcoming weekend just made me laugh:

This weekend already has a fair amount going on, Nazis will be celebrating Hitler's birthday, stoners will be smoking weed, Christians will be at church and also the trains through Stockport are all down.

The train thing is as relevant to organizing a protest as all the others (I wouldn't want to omit that a Jewish holiday is going on too!), but it's just such a wild combination of things.

The trans people of the local queer club have been invited to write something to be shared for Trans Day of Remembrance on Wednesday.

Of course I love to jump in and make things all about me but also I'm short on words lately.

We can write about anything but have been offered some prompts that are making me thoughtful:

"What's one thing you'd like cis people to know?"
"What's the best thing about being trans?"
"What was it like to come out?"
"How has your life changed since you came out?"

Of course, I'm probably more likely to write about, oh, the solidarity that is possible between trans people, disabled people and immigrants...or something about bodily autonomy...or about how medical transition seems to thrust a lot of previously-biotypical people into the status of effectively having a long-term health condition and -- while of course there is specific transphobic gatekeeping of medical care -- a lot of what trans people find themselves suddenly suffering from is run-of-the-mill in a system that's maybe okay at dealing with acute illness but not at all with chronic illness.

Okay that's probably too arcane and irrelevant to the situation, heh.

But TDoR makes me think about our bodies and how fragile they can be.

The key to taking effective action in a Trump world is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.

This one is for people who can vote in the UK. Please share.

Since #CovidIsNotOver, we want candidates to sign up to three low-cost, non-intrusive pledges:

1. Free Covid boosters for all
2. Reinstate waste-water testing for diseases
3. Air filtering and ventilation in classrooms

Vote Out Covid

This Disability Pride Month, I'm struck by how much my life and the lives of many disabled people, and many who don't want to become disabled by covid, are still constrained.

No one needs to deprive themselves of anything to change this. We have cheap and readily available air cleaning and ventilation and vaccines that work. All that is currently lacking is the political will to implement these things everywhere they need to be.

Please encourage candidates standing in your area to take this simple pledge to make the UK healthier and more equal. It's in all our best interests.

I finally did a personal response for the awful plan to stop staffing almost all ticket offices in England (and one in Glasgow. Link is to advice on what to write, since of course there's no questions in this consultation and there are two separate bodies you have to respond to depending on whether you're talking about stations in London or not in London, with no clear definition of what "London" is for these purposes...

The government and the rail industry have sure made this consultation unusually complex and confusing to engage with! It's almost like they don't want anyone to respond!

I'm sure glad that such a ludicrous notion could never be the case, because they would be disappointed with the response if they did -- I don't have exact numbers, but I've heard 460,000, and maybe as much as half a million, for the number of responses received as of a day or two ago. All this in a consultation that, even having been extended, is about two-thirds of the length that the delightfully-named Gunning Principles would suggest for a consultation with such drastic impact.

I finished our organisational response at work today and sent that in. And of course my own overlapped with that a lot -- I know the stats by heart of course -- but I also got to say some different things. I put one of the most important points at the end, for rhetorical impact, which I also wouldn't be allowed to do at work, heh:

Among my first thoughts when I heard about this consultation is how are blind people going to know that the stranger on a platform or concourse who tells us they're a member of staff actually is one, and not a member of the public who reckons we're vulnerable people they can exploit? None of the TOCs' [train operating companies] proposals address this anywhere! I imagine they haven't considered this problem at all -- with three-quarters of working-age visually impaired people unemployed, that means most lines of work are missing out on our perspective and train operators don't seem to be any exception.

One of the main benefits of ticket offices is that they're a fixed location -- I can learn the route to the ticket offices in familiar stations, and I can ask the way to the ticket office in unfamiliar stations -- and only staff can get inside them! So I know where to go if I need anything, and I know I'm speaking to someone trustworthy.

I don't think sighted people appreciate how, when you're handing over cash or your bank card, or when you're asking for sighted guidance -- i.e. to be led around by holding on to a stranger -- you can feel so vulnerable! It is inhumane to take away the trust and confidence we can currently have in staff at a ticket office, only to replace it with stress and a world that's more hostile to us.

Campaigners have hailed a victory for Glaswegian solidarity and told the Home Office “you messed with the wrong city” as two men detained by UK Immigration Enforcement were released back into their community after a day of protest.

thisfinecrew

This community was created to encourage political and social action in the U.S. during the last four years, a place of solidarity and information-sharing. While the United States has elected a Democratic president, the work is far from over. Trump was a symptom of much deeper problems in the Republican party and those won't go away once he's out of office.

Our community will continue its work, sharing links to information and actions you can take to support public policy that helps people rather than hurts them.

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