Part Of The Reason I Could Never Take Being Against Intersex Transfems Who Are "too Female" Seriously

I came to realize that Ive been an antagonist and a cruel individual towards Five Pebbles. My human pride led me to think when he stated himself as being godlike in comparison to the slugcat, he was being egotistical and self-centered. It's come to my realization that the whole time he's just being blunt. Hes factual, hes realistic, he doesn't tend to use slang or have things be toned down. Hes a victim of circumstance. Hes a being above the food chain. Moon's fall was merely a lot of bad circumstances occurring all at once and in the end Pebbles winds up in the same position as Moon. He isn't some cruel individual who places himself as a sun to the land below, hes a person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and wound up suffering because of it. I wish I could be able to talk with him face to face and tell him how sorry I am that I've caused him pain, for I've pillaged him and I've silenced his everlasting wait to be one without a pearl of music.

Who up gobbling they fucking wawa i guess

As soon as I saw @bug4932's template I knew I had to do this

I'm curious about the potato luck, perhaps tomorrow I shall be granted a most bountiful supply of frogs

This is abuser propaganda.

"You're dependent on me, so regardless of how I treat you, you're not allowed to hate me."

Decent people don't trap people in cycles like this. Decent people treat others with kindness so people wouldn't have any reason to hate them.

Tesla is tanking so hard it is dragging the entire EV segment's sales down into the negative. When you omit Tesla from the equation, EV sales are up 13% across the board.

Don't let anyone tell you EV sales are in a slump.

I absolutely LOVE the song "No Such Thing As A Hollywood Ending" from the 2018 movie "Anna And The Apocalypse"

It is an amazing beginning song as it fits with how the main characters, Anna and her best friend, are feeling. It fits with emotions and it gives little bits of insight as to the lives of random background characters. Any song can do this, but what makes this song special?

Warning, spoilers for this amazing Christmas musical under the cut. I recommend you watch the movie before reading all of this

First, it is called "No Such Thing As A Hollywood Ending" which hints to the fact that the film isn't going to play out how you would generally guess it to. This is then reinstated with the line "this is not the story you're dreaming of, the one where you get all you want, so stop your pretending, no such thing as a Hollywood ending" which then calls to the fact that many of the things you may want don't happen. The father isn't saved, the couple don't make it out alive, the grandma dies, the best friend is zombified.

Then there's John(the best friend)'s lines. He says that "the nice guys don't always get the girl" and he doesn't. He never gets to have that more solid relationship with Anna because he sacrifices himself for her, letting her live. He, the nice guy, doesn't survive and instead the bully does.

Then there's the lines of the couple. Christian and Lisa want a "love never ending" and Christian directly states "I'll never disappear" and these things ring true. They are both zombified in the end and are set to eternally linger in that room, occasionally bumping into one another. They are forever together in their undead state.

And then this all ties back to the very message of the song: "No Such Thing As A Hollywood Ending". No one gets what they want, it doesn't end how everyone expects. It's a comedy musical set during Christmas and so it would generally come to mind that there will be a happy ending where the main cast survives, but that doesn't happen. Only two of the original cast survive in the end, with Anna being the only one of the initial cast to survive. The bully and the butch are introduced later on, with the bully receiving even less of an introduction than the butch.

As the film progresses you want Christian to arrive to the musical number Lisa sings, you want Anna to get back to her father and survive, you want Anna and John to eventually get closer or maybe even get together.

But none of this happens.

"So stop your pretending, there's no such thing as a Hollywood ending"

Hey Dear.

Im Ashleyphil and i hope you’re doing well. I wanted to reach out and share a bit about what’s happening with us as LGBTQ refugees here in East Africa. Life has been incredibly tough we’re facing daily attacks from a hostile community, starvation due to lack of food, and illnesses like malaria and cholera because of poor living conditions.

We’ve GoFundMe campaign to help us survive:

https://gofund.me/4d80b32c.

Right now, our main priorities are food and safety.

I know times are hard for everyone, but if you’re able to donate or share the link, it would mean the world to us. Even the smallest amount makes a big difference.

Thank you so much for your kindness and support it truly gives us strength to keep going.

Take care,

Ashleyphil

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half baked morning rant

I do want to make it clear that the reason I talk about HRT and its biological effects so much is not because HRT or medicalization defines your gender.

Its because, for me personally, the interface of my biology education and my transition was mostly centered around figuring out what sex hormones do. I learned about basic biology principles like DNA organization, gene regulation, cell biology, and physiology in high school and undergrad. Taking that understanding and extending it to the mechanisms that hormones use to change gene regulation, and by extension, the rest of your body broadly, was something I did as my understanding became more complete in later undergrad and grad school. It was the key to me starting my own transition.

Why?

Because it was the first time I realized that the "basic biology" arguments of transphobes were complete and utter bullshit. From that point, it was a cascade. As in, wait, if dynamic changes in gene expression aren't considered "biological" to them, then why am I believing anything they say about anything else? When they talk about gametes, and try to include infertile cis people in their definitions of biological sex by talking about what gamete you're "intended" to make, what do they even mean? Why does my current gene expression not define that "intent"? And wait, back up, why is the brain suddenly not considered part of our biology? Why are neurological differences suddenly not "biological"? Why can we say someone's thinking patterns aren't "biological"?

Backing up even further, why does any of this matter more than psychological gender, or sociological gender? If the way we navigate society is gendered, that affects a lot of our lives, and we're just throwing that away?

Basically, being educated about how deep the biological changes of HRT really go was the first domino to fall when I worked through my internalized transphobia.

This is one of many reasons why I hate, hate HATE the concession that uninformed allies and even many trans people themselves give: "well NO ONE is saying that you can change your biological sex, sex and gender are completely unrelated, sex is binary and gender isn't!!!!!"

Well. I am saying that you can change your "biological" sex, I am saying that biological sex isn't binary, and I am saying that misunderstanding of those points has set back transgender advocacy. It makes medical decisions surrounding us less informed, it poisons conversations about how we interact with society, and it makes trans people feel like their gender and sex are less "real" than cis people's.

Not to mention the horrific way it discards intersex people from the conversation entirely.

Recently, I've seen this point enter the mainstream a little, by using intersex people and variation of sex in other species as a "counterargument" to "binary biological sex" thinking. It still doesn't sit right with me. One, because it uses intersex people as a prop for trans advocacy while not actually addressing the needs of either group. And two, because it completely disregards that your current biology and physiology is not 100% predestined from birth, and using people who were "born this way" as a prop does absolutely nothing to increase people's acceptance of trans people who change their biology later in life.

Ugh. This got away from me but yeah. That's my sipping coffee ramble for this morning. If anyone wants to add comment or correct me on discourse here, please do. Especially if you're intersex- this is all the observations of a perisex trans woman.