WrittenInRed (She/Her)

It really does feel more powerful half-erased lol

I mean, I took the original comment in this thread to mean more like politicians who don’t support trans rights probably won’t support those things very much, which doesn’t seem too untrue. Since the meme is pretty exclusively about politicians and how trans rights are a pretty good litmus test for other issues, and so a politician who is explicitly transphobic is probably shitty about a bunch of other things, while one who’s middling on supporting trans rights is also probably middle of the road on supporting those other things too.

In the same vein though, it’s a lot easier to say “vote for the lesser evil” when you aren’t being directly impacted by that issue. Even if being middle of the road on something like trans rights is better than outright hate, that still doesnt change that like 15+ states are trying to effectively ban trans people from existing in public by preventing us from using a bathroom without risking either arrest or assault, that in the majority of states trans minors can’t access the care they need, and that an increasing amount of the US is just not a place we could really even visit, let alone safely live in. Sure, if that’s true regardless then technically a vote that helps other people is better, but also trying to shame people for not voting in the face of that, rather than the politicians who are happily standing by while these issues get worse and worse to try and hold the votes of those communities hostage, is definitely blaming the wrong people.

And just like this post says, someone being middling on trans issues is also probably very middling on everything else, so really that argument also gets a lot weaker anyway. Plus, even if there existed a theoretical politician who was trying to bring back race segregation while also being a staunch supporter of trans rights for some reason, I still wouldn’t vote for them and I definitely wouldn’t blame anyone for not wanting to support them.

I say all this as someone who did vote for Harris in the last election, and who is active in mutual aid and activism groups in my area. Personally, I do consider voting to function as harm reduction in some cases, and I care about the issues impacting other marginalized communities plenty. (Also in general people who are a member of at least one marginalized group tend to be much more empathetic to other groups and their issues compared to people who aren’t). But I’ll never blame someone for not voting, whether its because they feel like voting legitimazes a rigged system, that the only options both totally suck and will result in their rights being stripped away regardless, that both options suck for a different marginalized group and they can’t justify support for that issue, they just feel unrepresented or like nothing will really change, or whatever. The blame for those people not voting is entirely in the hands of our government, political system, and the parties/candidates themselves.

If anything, I think the people who always vote for the lesser evil could be argued to be more at fault than the people who don’t show up. If someone knows they’ll have your vote regardless of their positions, as long as they arent quite as bad as the other party, why actually make things better? Making them worse is certainly more lucrative. That said, I definitely don’t think blaming individuals for the bad things a politician does is either fair or productive, and there’s a lot more everyone can and should do if they’re able to that isn’t voting, so spending time arguing about voting for the lesser evil or not isn’t worth it (I say, writing an essay-length comment about voting in response lol).

(Also sorry for the massive wall of text, I just kinda kept writing once I started haha)

Image Toolbox is decent, plus it has a ton of other useful features as well.

fdroid link

izzy link

I also went on those “baby name by year” sites for my birth year, but I purposefully went to the 100-200ish range since I wanted a name that wouldn’t stick out too much, but also wouldn’t be so common I’d know or meet a bunch of other people that shared it.

I also had a few other things that would be nice but not necessary that I wanted the name to have, so when reading down the list I had a smaller number of names to consider. One just jumped out at me though, so I tried it out for a bit and ended up sticking with it.

I feel like not having a president would actually be better than newsom tbh

Since middle school and throughout high school and college I got progressively more and more depressed due to repressed gender dysphoria, and starting HRT has almost immediately started reversing that. I had always been outspoken about how gender roles were stupid and never cared about using “women’s” things (like I shared my mom’s hair products and stuff), but none of that changed the fact that I was extremely uncomfortable in my body, and being perceived as a man was something to avoid as much as possible. If people made jokes like “that’s how you know you aren’t a woman haha” I would always fight back against that, but being compared to women felt like more of a compliment.

Plus imo anything a trans person does that could “reaffirm stereotypes” wouldn’t do that more than any cis person doing it. I’ve heard similar things from some cis feminists, where they felt that if they did something stereotypically “girly” it would be hypocritical of them, until realizing that the entire point was that you should be able to do those things if it makes you happy. Avoiding stereotypes can reinforce them just as much as doing them, since then it makes the people claiming the stereotypes as universally true seem like they have a view worth changing yourself for.

I won’t link to any of the articles I managed to find because all of them are way worse than just casual misgendering, but like F04118F said the harassment definitely went way further than using the wrong pronoun/gendered terms and included other teachers vandalizing their room and trying to prevent them from accessing the (already existing) gender neutral bathrooms.

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Yeah, honestly that was the thought that finally pushed me over the edge into accepting I was a trans girl instead of nonbinary or genderfluid or something. Like, I wanted so badly to be a girl at that point that my fear when starting HRT wasn’t "what if I’m making a mistake’, it was “what if I don’t get to be a girl”, which was so obviously trans that it was enough even for me lol.

A lot of mine are the same as ones that were listed, so here are the most stupidly obvious ones I somehow missed (or ignored) for like a decade.

1. I hoped my future partner would be bisexual “just in case”
2. Always being weirdly interested in watching trans youtubers and learning about HRT “as an ally”
3. And also weirdly envious of lesbian relationships, yet finding it hard to imagine myself in a relationship as a guy
4. Whenever I’d see a transition timeline, my immediate thought for transmasc ones was “good for them!”, but for transfem ones it was “dang, that’s goals” followed by “wait I’m cis, where did that come from”
5. I “knew” I wasn’t trans, but kinda wished I could be
6. Just before finally fully admitting I was trans I started HRT so I’d “know for sure”, and was worried that after starting I would realize I wasn’t trans and not be able to keep transitioning lol