This framing influences the discursive terms of not just trans care, but the legal recognition of trans identity the world over, even in regimes that, I must stress, do not provide any health coverage for free or subsidized rates! India, for example, is a LIBERTARIAN WONDERLAND. Pay or fuck off. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

taliabhatt.itch.io • 59 days ago

This framing influences the discursive terms of not just trans care, but the legal recognition of trans identity the world over, even in regimes that, I must stress, do not provide any health coverage for free or subsidized rates! India, for example, is a LIBERTARIAN WONDERLAND. Pay or fuck off.

Comments

taliabhatt.itch.io•59 days ago

I've seen people express fears about "framing transition as a choice losing us cis allies", but that's not the point. The point is to stop justifying transness, to stop giving so much heft to the "why" and instead focus on the fact that we exist, we need this care, and we have a right to it.

siobhanftb.bsky.social•59 days ago

This is my biggest regret of my earliest activism. I thought if I could provide an adequate "why" that cissexists would desist, not understanding for several years that the why questions are polite smokescreens for the what: eradication, or (at best) regulation.

siobhanftb.bsky.social•59 days ago

A lot of cissexists have an understanding that it would look bad to hitch one's post to "we SHOULD police gender actually" so they have a lot of mealymouthed ways to avoid admitting this is their principle.

alyssa.codes•59 days ago

That sounds nice, but I'm skeptical this will be more effective than "dysphoria is innate and treatable with transition" in my lifetime. (not "being trans", dysphoria in particular)

alyssa.codes•59 days ago

At some point we have to connect with cis people who have no context for our lives. They all want a "why does this matter to you" and in my experience "for my own dignity" is never enough for them. How would you get over that empathy gap?

jjofbc.bsky.social•59 days ago

i have had plenty of success talking to cis people - especially cis women using a rights framework. it links explicitly to bodily autonomy and abortion

birth control *IS* HRT

jjofbc.bsky.social•59 days ago

I have found "whose business is it what hormones I have?" and "people should be able to take whatever hormones they want whether they are cis or trans" to work fantastically well with cis people

i cannot see how "I am a weird broken person who needs to be medicalized" would be better

taliabhatt.itch.io•59 days ago

A good place to look is at Thai activism, where HRT is OTC and the fight for both gay marriage and trans recognition is focusing on the immorality of mandating specific forms of gendered existence on citizens who should have the right to live as they wish, not as the state mandates.

faerynnistired.itch.io•59 days ago

if i think about some of the Major GLs here, a lot focus on the inherent injustice of homophobia. like it’s very In Your Face and not subtle about that either

faerynnistired.itch.io•59 days ago

like i guess you can argue it’s very “look at these nice lesbians, isn’t it really fucked that they can’t live like everyone else?” but like… idk, it gets results?

hard to say how much media played a role in the recent law being passed but there’s definitely an attitude here of “why should
i care?”

faerynnistired.itch.io•59 days ago

tbf it’s like that about a lot of things. ime here it’s been such a “mind your own fucking business” vibe

taliabhatt.itch.io•59 days ago

If you can look at the news coming out of Thailand right now, in the midst of a global transphobic panic and the resurgence of patriarchal bio-fascist sentiment across the West, and still defend the outdated language under which all our rights have been dismantled, I just cannot help you.

taliabhatt.itch.io•59 days ago

We are laboring for legibility under a regime that is unsympathetic to those whose bodies are "medically" deemed Other, angling for sympathy from unsympathetic eliminationists whose ideological forefathers wanted to cull the unworthy for the sake of "social hygiene".

Be cognizant of that!

taliabhatt.itch.io•59 days ago

We can't rely on strategies that tacitly concede the right to our sex can only be begrudgingly conceded. The "rape exemption" tactics for abortion access concede the idea that abortion is a horrible, tragic occurrence to minimize rather than an expression of gendered autonomy. See where THAT led.

zyla.top•59 days ago

on demand, without explanation, for free, is the only sane policy for abortion as well as gender care

jokerfish.bsky.social•59 days ago

i was really trying to articulate this yesterday and you did a better job... i didn't know how to point out no "born this way" didn't exactly work without scaring the hoes. gay rights are next on the chopping block no matter what rhetorical strategies they used

taliabhatt.itch.io•59 days ago

*can only be begrudgingly GRANTED

sighhh

taliabhatt.itch.io•59 days ago

The time is not to be naive about the era of medical hypersurveillance over our bodies simply because we're much more explicitly under attack now.

We must recognize how the former state of affairs led to the assaults of today, and realize that we need to scrap all that has been used to harm us.

gengarro.bsky.social•59 days ago

If you want true freedom of choice then all sides of the choice need to be normalised.

nexusspacey.bsky.social•59 days ago

Even if we didn't have a right to it still wouldn't make blocking access to it OK.