Here again – trans people can absolutely say what it’s like to have gender dysphoria, but no one else can. Trans people and trans people only know what gender dysphoria is and what gender nonconformity is and that they are different and exactly how they are different.

Let's be absolutely clear, cis women claiming they had "gender dysphoria" as kids because they were tomboys are lying. They are deliberately conflating gender nonconformity with gender dysphoria, not because they believe it, but because it is useful to muddy the waters.

— Casey Explosion (@CaseyExplosion) January 5, 2019

Let’s be absolutely clear, cis women claiming they had “gender dysphoria” as kids because they were tomboys are lying. They are deliberately conflating gender nonconformity with gender dysphoria, not because they believe it, but because it is useful to muddy the waters.

But why? Why would that be true? Why should we believe it? Why is it the case that they know all about what it’s like to be what we are, but we don’t know a damn thing about what it’s like to be what they are? Where did they get this absolute knowledge that we have no access to?

TERF women claiming "I got made fun of for being a tomboy" is the exact same thing as "I wanted to die because everyone kept calling me 'she,' and that's not who I am" need to check themselves. You have no goddamn idea what dysphoria is like.

— Faith (@RoseOfWindsong) January 5, 2019

TERF women claiming “I got made fun of for being a tomboy” is the exact same thing as “I wanted to die because everyone kept calling me ‘she,’ and that’s not who I am” need to check themselves. You have no goddamn idea what dysphoria is like.

How do they know that? How can they know that? If their experience is a black box to us, how can our experience be a transparent box to them? Do they have magic powers?

Sorry, but none of this adds up. It’s true that we can’t know what anyone else’s experience is like from the inside, but that applies every bit as much to trans people as it does to everyone else. All we can do is talk and describe, and we’re all on the same footing that way. I think it’s probably true that my experience of pretending to be a lot of boy characters (as well as a lot of girl characters) as a kid, and of hating skirts and dresses, was not miserable enough to qualify as gender dysphoria, but I’m not at all sure about it, because it’s not clear exactly what gender dysphoria is. It’s a Feeling in the Head and there’s nothing more precise about it than that.

We’re not lying and we don’t need to check ourselves.

Okay now I just don’t know what to believe.

Adrian Harrop tells a woman what her experience is.

https://twitter.com/DrAdrianHarrop/status/1081360068879241222

But we are always told it’s Forbidden to deny anyone’s Lived Experience. That’s a big no-no. Subjective experience trumps mere physical facts, we are told over and over and over. So why do the rules suddenly change when it’s someone who doesn’t claim to be trans or to be literally the other sex?

Also, what in fact is the difference? How can we tell when the difference is present when all it seems to be is “but more so”? Gender nonconformity is totally different from gender dysphoria because gender dysphoria is like gender nonconformity but waaaaaay more so. Oh? So, how do we measure it? How can we tell? How do we know?

Harrop seems very confident that it’s because of “the agreed and specific definition” but he’s just blowing smoke in the Trumpian fashion.

All these fiery little radicals, but they’ve apparently never heard a thing about the way medical categories have changed over time, have been shaped by existing prejudices, have been oh so conveniently adapted to fit the needs of the rulers. Remember “drapetomania”?

Drapetomania was a conjectural mental illness that, in 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright hypothesized as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity. It has since been debunked as pseudoscience and part of the edifice of scientific racism.

Harrop is peering confusedly out of a window in the edifice of scientific sexism.

I read the opening of a piece by Elizabeth Goitein at the Atlantic on Trump and emergency powers the other day, and found it so alarming I stopped reading. Now it appears we’re being dragged over that threshold…which could be game over. It was for Germany, and it could be for us.

Trump has long signaled his disdain for the concepts of limited presidential power and democratic rule. During his 2016 campaign, he praised murderous dictators. He declared that his opponent, Hillary Clinton, would be in jail if he were president, goading crowds into frenzied chants of “Lock her up.” He hinted that he might not accept an electoral loss. As democracies around the world slide into autocracy, and nationalism and antidemocratic sentiment are on vivid display among segments of the American populace, Trump’s evident hostility to key elements of liberal democracy cannot be dismissed as mere bluster.

It would be nice to think he couldn’t, but guess what, he can.

Unknown to most Americans, a parallel legal regime allows the president to sidestep many of the constraints that normally apply. The moment the president declares a “national emergency”—a decision that is entirely within his discretion—more than 100 special provisions become available to him. While many of these tee up reasonable responses to genuine emergencies, some appear dangerously suited to a leader bent on amassing or retaining power. For instance, the president can, with the flick of his pen, activate laws allowing him to shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the United States or freeze Americans’ bank accounts. Other powers are available even without a declaration of emergency, including laws that allow the president to deploy troops inside the country to subdue domestic unrest.

You see the problem.

The airport pat-down patrol has been calling in sick.

Hundreds of Transportation Security Administration officers, who are required to work without paychecks through the partial government shutdown, have called out from work this week from at least four major airports, according to two senior agency officials and three TSA employee union officials.

Did you miss it? I’ll repeat.

Hundreds of Transportation Security Administration officers, who are required to work without paychecks through the partial government shutdown

Who are required to work for no pay. That’s what we call “slavery,” and it’s not allowed.

“This problem of call outs is really going to explode over the next week or two when employees miss their first paycheck,” a union official at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport told CNN. “TSA officers are telling the union they will find another way to make money. That means calling out to work other jobs.”

You know, this isn’t a job that rich people do. Let’s look up what the pay is.

Airport security jobs typically begin at the D pay band, which is $25,518 to $38,277. The promotion potential is the E pay band, which is $29,302 to $44,007. In addition to the base salary for TSA airport jobs, individuals may receive a locality pay, depending on where the job is located.

Not that much. If you have a couple of kids (or more), maybe parents you have to help, have to drive to get there, have high rent or a big mortgage…the pay is not that much. They likely live paycheck to paycheck. They can’t work without pay – yet apparently our government “requires” them to. Illegally.

Two of the sources, who are federal officials, described the sick outs as protests of the paycheck delay. One called it the “blue flu,” a reference to the blue shirts worn by transportation security officers who screen passengers and baggage at airport security checkpoints.
A union official, however, said that while some employees are upset about the pay, officers have said they are calling in sick for more practical reasons. Single parents can no longer afford child care or they are finding cash-paying jobs outside of government work to pay their rent and other bills, for example.

Ya think?

Speaking of girls and princesses – do children need drag queens?

An event at which a drag artist will read stories to children has sparked outrage on social media.

Alyssa Van Delle has been invited to Taunton Library in February as part of LGBTQ+ History Month.

The performer will read from children’s books that cover LGBT themes or challenge traditional fairy tales.

But what are “LGBT themes”? They’re a grab-bag, aren’t they, and drag queens don’t exactly represent all such themes. They don’t speak much to the L part, for instance, and by some lights they just plain insult it. Lesbians and gay men share some interests but not all; lesbians are women and gay men are men and there is that familiar hierarchy, that doesn’t just vanish because it’s LGBTQ+.

The tour is also working with Islington Council to introduce a range of books for primary schools covering issues such as gender and sexual identity.

The aim is help youngsters increase their understanding and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.

Same problem. The putative LGBTQ+ community covers a lot of issues (“such as gender and sexual identity”), and many of them are highly contested within said community. It’s not clear that drag queens are the ideal ambassadors or educators on this jumble of issues.

News from Brazil:

The new Minister of Women, the Family and Human Rights, pastor Damares Alves, created more controversy by saying that “a new era has started in Brazil” and that “boys wear blue and girls wear pink.” The remarks were caught on a video that also shows her chanting the sentence and being applauded.

On Wednesday (2nd), she was sworn in, among cries from the audience  of “Hallelujah” and “Praise the Lord,” she made an emotional speech saying there there will be no more “ideological indoctrination” of children and teenagers, and that “girls will be princesses and boys will be princes,” and criticized unnamed media outlets.

Meaning, boys will be dominant and girls will be submissive. Yay?

Alves, known for her religious fervor, extolled her faith more than once during her swearing-in. “The State is secular, but this minister is extremely Christian, and because of that, she believes in God’s design,” she said.

Yes, and that’s the problem: believing in “God’s design” means making your own prejudices and worship of conservative tradition something designed by your friend Mister God, and that makes everything you do sacred and unchallengeable.

H/t soogeeoh at Miscellany Room