@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

ada

@[email protected]

Admin of lemmy.blahaj.zone

I can also be found on the microblog fediverse at @ada or on matrix at @ada:chat.blahaj.zone

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

ada,
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I’ve never seen snow…

Unless you count from an aeroplane…

2023 Owl of the Year Winner!!! White Faced Scops Owl!!!

With a final score of 125-99, it is clear that White Faced Scops in your choice for the first ever SuperbOwl Owl of the Year! WFS will in the near future be our new community icon, and Snowy, Screech, and Buffy will share the banner. We’ll come up with some good ideas and see what looks best and get that taken care of....

ada,
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Santa, is that you?

ada,
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Transmeds. Trans folk who gatekeep other trans folk, and think they can say who is “really trans” and who isn’t.

ada,
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Why? What language are we lacking that would help if added, that wouldn’t just lead to more gatekeeping?

We already have the language to talk about various elements of social and medical transition.

ada,
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As I said though, what language are we lacking that we don’t already have?

ada,
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Well, the easiest example is that some people use “trans” to mean anyone who has physicslly started to transition, others consider someone to be trans when they decide to broadcast their new gender identity, and others consider them to have always been trans. The opinion on which one is correct is often quite strong.

Yep. People have strong feelings about their own journeys and identities. They’re welcome to do that. But when they start having strong feelings about other people’s journeys and identities, when they feel like that get to decide who isn’t and isn’t trans based on whatever criteria they particularly feel to be important, then they’re gatekeeping.

Those are the truscum and transmeds I want nothing to do with.

but that opens up the system for abuse by bad actors looking to false flag the trans community.

No it doesn’t. That’s just an excuse people use to post hoc validate their gatekeeping.

ada,
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I haven’t seen any gatekeeping to exclude those that haven’t gone through physical transition

There’s a whole branch of trans gatekeepers called transmed/truscum that do exactly that!

ada,
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But opening up that definition

It’s not “opening up” a definition. It is the definition.

But opening up that definition means we need another way to refer to people who are physically transitioning, because there are meaningful differences in their experiences and needs.

No we don’t. Not everyone who undergoes medical transition undergoes the same journey. Some folk want surgery, some folk want HRT, some folk want both, some folk want one but not the other. Some folk want to micro dose, some folk want to replicate cis hormone levels.

There is no meaningful catch all term that summarises the needs of all of those folk. Trying to find a single term to capture that spectrum leads to a single narrative of what medical transition looks like, and makes it harder for people to transition on their own terms.

The language we need to talk about these things already exists, and is improving and changing with time. Nothing is gained by returning to the old days of binary terms and all or nothing language.

there’s nothing inherently gatekeeping about it;

Yes there is. It’s defining folk who medically transition as being a different class of trans folk. We’re not a different class. We all of us have unique needs, and the language should focus on those individual needs, whether they’re medical, social or other.

Defining “trans” to be narrower than the wider definition is only wrong because we’re attached to the current definition

This is exactly the sort of thing I was talking about in my original reply. I’m a binary trans woman, who medically transitioned with all of the bells and whistles, and so I get lumped in with people who genuinely believe statements like this.

I actively, loudly and strongly disagree with what you’ve said here, and I hate that people often assume I share beliefs like that. Defining the term trans to be narrower than it is is gatekeeping, end of story. It denies people the right to their own identity. That is inherently bad. People define for themselves, even in a hypothetical scenario where bad faith actors try and fuck it up

ada,
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I guess owl wait longer for the results

You’re a hoot

ada,
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In the closet and out of the closet

ada,
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You’re going down Snow!

how did you deal with internalised transphobia?

It’s something I’m really struggling with, thanks to it it feels like I’m obsessed with the idea of ‘passing’, like whenever I see other trans women who don’t pass it gives me a little burst of dread, thinking that it’s impossible to pass and I’d never be able to. That horrible fear of looking “like a man in a...

ada, (edited )
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Time.

It takes time to unpack a lifetime of transphobia directed at you. It makes it hard to accept yourself, it makes it hard to come out and then it makes you second guess and invalidate yourself.

But it’s all shit that the world has place on you. And you can undo, but that also takes time. You need to give yourself permission to take the time needed to work on it, without beating yourself up for being not being able to undo a lifetime of indoctrination in an instant

ada,
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I spent a lot of time and money striving towards passing. And then I got there, and I found that it cost me something I really value. My queerness is largely invisible at work. Random trans folk I see look right past me. Visibility is important to be (though I didn’t realise that at the time) and I lost a lot of my ability to be easily visible

ada,
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The thing is, hair is equally as heritable, and immediately visible. As humans, we can see and categorise skin equally with hair.

The fact that we don’t use hair as a major defining trait though is arbitrary. That’s just social norms, nothing more.

ada,
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Those are not major defining traits. They could be, but they’re not.

masimatutu, to fediverse en-gb

Default instance blocks should largely replace defederation

Since what content users might want to see is quite unlikely to match which servers the admins tolerate, choosing instance on the Fediverse can be quite complicated, which is inconvenient and off-putting for new users.

For this reason, and simply that the Fediverse is stronger united, I believe defederation should ideally be reserved for illegal content and extreme cases. If Fediverse platforms would allow instances to simply block the rest for users by default, the user experience would be the same, unless they decide otherwise.

@fediverse

ada,
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Ask people who face open abuse because of their identity how they feel, and you’ll see that not everyone wants what you want.

If there are people who want me dead, then a response of “tough, you and every other queer person has to block them all yourselves, one by one” isn’t the all in one solution you think it is.

ada,
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Who builds those default lists? Because most social media platforms are tolerant of transphobia for example, as long as it’s “civil”.

ada,
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Ok, I can see that. Hard and soft options. The admin can choose whether it can be over ridden by users or not.

ada,
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I’ve never owned a car and likely never will, and honestly, that fact holds a special place in my heart

ada,
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Let’s just say I’ve raised a child who is now an adult, all without a car. By now, I know the inconveniences and opportunities it costs me well, but for me, they’re just not enough of a reason.

ada,
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You might also have languages set incorrectly

ada, (edited )
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Gender may in part be a social construct, but that doesn’t make it not real. Social constructs are very real.

ada,
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I was going to say “just ask billionaires”, but then I’d have had to make it clear I was referring to the social construct of money. And I had a bus to catch, so I just removed it, except for a single word :)

Just

ada,
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That’s my very point. Basketball is a social construct, and it’s also real. It’s subjective, open to change, means different things to different people, but it’s still very real.

ada,
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I mean, for some it’s not…

ada,
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Sorry Snowy. You get too much attention. Time to stand aside for some new talent

ada,
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I guess it’s easier to frame the subject, compared to the long eared owls :)

ada,
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I run an instance focused on the needs of trans and gender diverse folk, because big instances run by cis folk tend not to deal with transphobia as well as I would like.

Centralised instances not dealing with transphobia is why I left most other social media platforms, so you can imagine I’m keen not to just repeat that experience here

ada,
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If Gleason has anything to do with it, it’s safe to say it’s best avoided

ada,
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It’s not a matter of getting it “under control”. The trolls specifically create accounts with us to get us defederated, including verifying email and answering approval questions.

The thing that is meant to stop them (rate limiting) doesn’t work.

In short there is nothing we can do to get it under control short of blocking them when they slip through the cracks.

If that’s not good enough and you still want to defederate, well, that was their goal…

ada,
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The rest of the lemmyverse has put up with kbins spam problem for months. You’ll handle a few days from us

ada,
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Despite the teething problems, you’re doing a great job with kbin. In my mind, it’s got more potential than lemmy does!

ada,
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I think this view in my Lemmy timeline neatly explains it…

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/122ebca1-f338-4743-a063-f26c231ad23d.jpeg

ada,
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Since a lot of women have started to call their female friends “girlfriends

That was the original meaning of the word before it ever had romantic connotations.

From Wikipedia…

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest meaning of the word “girlfriend”, from 1859 on, was to designate “a female friend; esp. a woman’s close female friend”. In the late 1800s, it took on the meaning of “A female with whom a person has a romantic or sexual relationship”.

ada,
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I have one time codes for that

ada,
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your morals would go out the window.

Why would they? I don’t enjoy hurting people, and I wouldn’t start enjoying it if I could magically get away with it.

ada, (edited )
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Sure, I don’t know how I’d react. I know for sure I’d do dodgy, illegal things. I also know that legal and moral are not synonyms. And I also know that the only person I have no choice but to live with is myself, and I have no intention of doing anything that makes me hate myself. Stopping time doesn’t change that.

ada, (edited )
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I think I’m missing something from your perspective here? The idea in this image only works with the players consent at the first step of the process? If the player wants to nix it, they have the chance to do so before it’s ever used in game.

I saw this meme, and thought it sounded great, so if I were going to bring it to my table, it would have been pretty much exactly in the form I read here.

How would you suggest that a GM approaches it to get player consent that is different to how it’s laid out here?

ada,
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No, you need to get opt in from your players before making a storyline centred around misleading rumours

Why do people hate on mobile games, call them "not real games" and mock them, when some mobile-exclusive games are the best games I've played?

The Infinity Blade or Minigore series, for example, or anything made by Illusion Labs. These games are genius and most consoles don’t even have a touch screen or utilise it well like some smartphone games do....

ada,
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I’ve yet to meet a game with a touch screen interface that doesn’t annoy the hell out of me

ada,
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For me, the best part is that it’s over and we’re heading in to summer!

ada,
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laser is the second longest lasting hair removal.

I wouldn’t phrase it quite that way.

Laser hair removal is permanent. The issue is that it’s not 100% effective. It doesn’t matter how many times you laser, some hairs always survive, and they will keep growing. But the ones it does zap stay zapped.

Electrolysis has a better hit rate for making hair follicles stay down, but if you’ve got dark hair, it’s much slower to receive electrolysis than it is to receive laser.

I’ve only ever had laser hair removal on my face, the tiny amount of hairs that remain are manageable with tweezers.

ada,
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If you’ve got dark hair, then yes, it’s absolutely worth it. It’s something you can do to “start the ball rolling” before HRT is accessible, and HRT doesn’t really make much of a difference to the long term outcome you’ll get from laser.

But what gives me some hesitation and doubt is that if I start laser hair removal without suppressed T that completely new hair follicles would grow which would ruin the results of previous sessions. Is that possible

Nope. Once a follicle is down, it stays down. However, hair grows in a years long cycle, which is why it takes multiple sessions spread over time. Even if you get all of the active follicles (which you won’t. Laser will get most of them, but not all of them), new hairs will become active every month.

HRT can turn terminal hair follicles (the thick darker ones) in to vellus hair follicles (the light thin ones), and it can slow down regrowth, but both of those effects are minimal on facial hair

ada,
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I’m well aware. I know the effort will be made, but whether it happens depends on political outcomes here.

ada,
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My experience with my union hasn’t been great. I was a member, and when I needed their assistance (not about anything trans related), they were completely non helpful. They brushed me off, asked for my employers version of events (airing my grievance with my employer without my consent), and then closed the issue down as soon as my employer gave a reply.

ada,
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Transition doesn’t make you lose body parts though

Mine certainly did

ada,
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Unpierces your ears

I have that super power naturally :)

ada,
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I’ve lost every piercing I’ve had, and they’ve all healed over, ears included. I’m also allergic to a lot of metals, and coloured ink in tattoos, so I’m guessing that it’s all related

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