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I think the reason a lot of leftists struggle with disability justice is that they haven't moved past the concept that discrimination isn't bad because it's objectively "wrong." yes, sexists are objectively wrong when they try to claim women are dumber than men. yes, antisemites are objectively wrong that jewish people are inherently greedy and run the state. yes, racists are wrong when they try to claim that white people are the superior race. and so on.

but then with disabled people, there are a lot of objective truths to the discrimination we face. people with IDs/LDs do fall behind and struggle with certain concepts. physically disabled people are often weaker and less capable of performing demanding tasks than able bodied people. many of us with mental illnesses are more reckless and less responsible. a lot of us are dependent on others and do not contribute much "worth".

and guess what? disabled people still deserve a place in the world. disabled people still deserve the supports they need. because they are people, and that should be enough to support them and believe they deserve a place at the table.

if your only rebuttal against discrimination is its objective inaccuracies, you are meeting bigots where they are at. you are validating the very concept that if and when people are truly incapable of being equal to the majority, that means they are worth less. this causes some leftists to then try to deny the objective realities of disabled people and/or become ableist themselves.

your rallying behind marginalized groups should start and end with the fact that people are completely worthy of life and equity, because they are fellow human beings and that should, frankly, be enough.

no i don't want to use your ai assistant. no i don't want your ai search results. no i don't want your ai summary of reviews. no i don't want your ai feature in my social media search bar (???). no i don't want ai to do my work for me in adobe. no i don't want ai to write my paper. no i don't want ai to make my art. no i don't want ai to edit my pictures. no i don't want ai to learn my shopping habits. no i don't want ai to analyze my data. i don't want it i don't want it i don't want it i don't fucking want it i am going to go feral and eat my own teeth stop itttt

was skimming through a book on queer history and read about how in the UK, the reason they refused to pass an anti-lesbian law in the 1800s was explicitly to prevent women from realizing lesbianism existed. that was the reason they gave. that passing the law would acknowledge lesbianism as an option and they couldn't possibly risk that.

and i just think that's like. such a perfect example of lesbian + transmasc erasure. our """safety""" is having politicians shape laws around preventing people from ever knowing we exist so that no good little daughters / future wives get any Ideas. and on top of that if we do manage to scrape out an existence for ourselves despite this, we are constantly in danger of outed and murdered by a jealous husband/father/brother or just someone who hates queers and/or women or thrown in an insane asylum to be abused until we die in silence. okayyyyyy 👍

it is hard to explain but there is something so unwell about the cultural fear of ugliness. the strange quiet irradiation of any imperfect sight. the pores and the stomachs and the legs displaced into a digital trashbin. somehow this effect spilling over - the removal of a grinning strangers in the back of a picture. of placing more-photogenic clouds into a frame. of cleaning up and arranging breakfast plates so the final image is of a table overflowing with surplus - while nobody eats, and instead mimes food moving towards their mouth like tantalus.

ever-thinner ever-more-muscled ever-prettier. your landlord's sticky white paint sprayed over every surface. girlchildren with get-ready-with-me accounts and skincare routines. beige walls and beige floors and beige toys in toddler hands. AI-generated "imagined prettier" birds and bugs and bees.

pretty! fuckable! impossible! straighten teeth. use facetune and lightroom and four other products. remove the cars along the street from the video remove the spraypaint from the garden wall remove the native plants from their home, welcome grass. welcome pretty. let the lot that walmart-still-owns lay fallow and rotting. don't touch that, it's ugly! close your eyes.

erect anti-homelessness spikes. erect anti-bird spikes. now it looks defensive, which is better than protective. put the ramp at the back of the building, you don't want to ruin the aesthetic of anything.

you are a single person in this world, and in this photo! don't let the lives of other people ruin what would otherwise be a shared moment! erase each person from in front of the tourist trap. erase your comfortable shoes and AI generate platforms. you weren't smiling perfectly, smile again. no matter if you had been genuinely enjoying a moment. you are not in a meadow with friends, you're in a catalogue of your own life! smile again! you know what, forget it.

we will just edit the right face in.

Daily Kos

Trump proposes genocidal national ban on transgender existence if he wins 2024

On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump released an anti-transgender tirade of a speech on his social media website Truth Social, outlining a genoc

On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump released an anti-transgender tirade of a speech on his social media website Truth Social, outlining a genocidal plan against all transgender existence in the United States. Everyone on the right from mainstream Republicans to hardcore neo-Nazis are celebrating the video while Democrats and legacy news media outlets have so far largely ignored it. “So this is what we are up against,” tweeted legislative researcher and pro-transgender activist Erin Reed. She continues, “a national transgender ban in 2024. This is what they are planning. DeSantis is practicing this through executive actions in Florida. Trump is openly saying he will do the same.” This is unambiguously genocidal territory. Holocaust museums have warned that this rising anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric mirrors the hate that led up to the rise of Nazi Germany.

As a trans man and as a Ukrainian Jew, I cannot stress how important it is for us to know our history.

LGBTQ representation in Slavic countries is almost nonexistent. The ubiquity of gender norms is so often baked into our culture and societies. The looming threat of violence if we don't comply is so omnipresent that it prevents us from forming a strong community. Our stories are shared privately, hushed, with bated breath from friend to friend.

Far too much, i've witnessed the loneliness and alienation of people like me, the paralysing fear in parents' eyes for the fates of their children. I still cannot share my transness with my closest friends or relatives. People I have known since I was a child, whom I've shared my whole life with.

Imagine how many of us are living in the exact same circumstances. But we can never appease them enough, no matter how much we bend and mold ourselves for a semblance of normalcy that never existed.

It does not have to stay this way. Through making our history known, we must stay alive and stand united now more than ever.

We have always existed, and we aren't going anywhere.

Queer Jews Project Day 8 - Berel-Beyle

We only know about Berel-Beyle through Yeshaye Katovski’s letter to the Forward in 1936 about “the girl who became a man.” To summarize: Berel-Beyle was AFAB, grew up in Krivozer, Ukraine, left home for Odessa, transitioned to a man, went back to his hometown, was accepted by his community, and married an old girlfriend, Black Rachel.

To quote the letter, “In our shtetl, Berel-Beyle always had a good name as a fine, upstanding Jew.”

I wish we knew more about this trans ancestor, but I’m glad we know about him.

Learn more about Berel-Beyle here.

Queer Jews Project

Final Pre-Election 2024 Anti-Trans Risk Assessment Map

Erin Reed has presented a new version of her Anti-Trans Risk Assessment Map over at Erin in the Morning.

She writes:

The elections have tightened across the United States, and anti-trans ads have become a major part of the 2024 campaign cycle. As such, the risk has substantially raised for nationwide laws targeting transgender people in the coming years for both youth and adults. For states, the state of Texas has been upgraded to Do Not Travel, only the second state to receive such a recommendation. This comes as Odessa, Texas becomes the first city in the nation to pass a $10,000 bounty on transgender people inside of bathrooms.

Read the whole article here.

Fellow trans men I need you to know that shitting on other trans men is not going to make people who hate trans men like you.

Sure, they’re nice at first. After all, you’re One Of The Good Ones. You’re not like those other trans men and transmascs. You’re not some cringe achillean soft boy playing the ukelele and listening to Cavetown. You’re not gonna date a straight man and detransition for him in a few years because you’re actually trans and not some stupid girl trying to be trendy. You understand your issues don’t matter as much as everyone else’s and you spend your time uplifting everyone else and shutting down any of those insufferable pooner fakeboys claiming otherwise. You don’t even listen to them directly, you let everyone else tell you what they’re saying so they don’t contaminate you.

But one day you’re going to step out of line. You’re going to disagree with someone on something and you won’t be able to just sit back and shut up on it. Or you’ll do something you didn’t even realize would be an issue. But you’ve done it. You’ve said it. And now your status as One Of The Good Ones has evaporated into nothingness. You’re just another Aiden now. You probably sing shitty bedroom pop songs about wanting to be a bug. They’re imagining you in their heads as having a picrew icon with the toothpaste mlm flag. Hell, give it two years and you’ll be a terf and that’s assuming some cishet dude’s dick doesn’t turn you into a cishet girl.

Then you’ll have two options. One is to realize it never mattered how hard you tried to convince these people you were worth listening to or caring about by playing the part they wanted and being their token, they still ultimately never cared about you and you made a mistake throwing other transmascs and trans men under the bus. Your other option is to dig yourself deeper, deny deny deny, and then hope you can find acceptance in a new group where the same cycle of events will repeat.

Only one of those options will let you heal.

we are in a media literacy crisis