Hey, trans masc here,

Love the sentiment but don't feel like an ass. If you want to include us in the sentiment it does some great stuff! It signals to trans and non-binary people who might be in listening range but be closeted or suppressing their needs in the interest of "not making waves" that you are a safe person to be themselves around. A lot of people who "don't know a non binary person" might not simply because the ones around them are in hiding because onboarding someone to our status is exhausting and sometimes risky so signaling that you've already done some the work is AMAZING.

But that being said... Don't feel guilty. This isn't a game of right and wrong. "Political Correctness" is a tactic from the 90's that really didn't work because it was about policing. It was a cold politeness rather than a meaningful offering of solidarity or a chance to learn and there is a learning curve to allyship and thus a gratitude just for trying or considering a change. That you feel guilty is very sweet but you deserve to be comfortable and happy too. We as a community tend to celebrate people doing us a kindness, not begrudge people. Your friend showed you a spot where you could insert a moment of solidarity in the future if you wanted. That you immediately seem to want to is a rarer gift than you know.

Aight, so whomever needs to hear this. The average vaginal canal is only about 3-4 inches long and might lengthen to about 5 inches if relaxed. Despite what bad porn anatomy might tell you it can hurt to go deeper than that. All of the nerve endings are clustered at the opening.

The prostate is two inches deep. Virtually all the same mechanics apply.

Your penis is fine.

Oh for... It's been like a few months, just leave DOGE off your resumes and come up with something to explain the gap! If you were notorious enough to be recognized by name as a DOGE staffer then just go job hunting in the red states or set up somewhere where nobody cares. There's plenty of tech bro nonsense firms that will take them...The softest brush with anything resembling consequences has this lot screaming and while I understand folk love hearing it their entitled assholery is grating as hell.

I mean when you look at Harry Potter through a magnifying glass it's actually very pro status quo with a lot of issues breaking down to "the wrong people in charge" a lot of gestures made towards the sort of social problems of the society... Like look at house elves. We meet Dobby and everyone agrees that slave holding situation isn't ideal but once we meet more house elves we learn that Dobby is kind of a weirdo and that they are effectively a sentient slave race with only exceptions like Dobby taking issue with being bound. Hermione sees this as a legitimate issue as any potential elf could be a Dobby but then great detail is placed about how annoying and virtually pointless her advocacy is but the rest of her society and the framing effectively informs the reader - "don't think about house elves. Dobby is fine. It's not your problem and shouldn't be." It's framed as a problem to be solved on a small scale interpersonal basis because by and large the system works.

It's generally difficult for people to critically read a narrative that throws up that many hairpin bends particularly when the set ups are made in the book that these things are social problems... but then never paid off. That it happens a fair amount innthe books is a fairly confusing yarnball. It feels progressive in the same way a company mission statement that is not being enacted in any real way feels progressive.

They made her feel bad when they told her she was being mean?

That's basically it. She just got informed what she had done hurt some people DARVOed into the sun and just kept doubling down.

Funny how many US bases are on foreign soil and exist almost entirely at the pleasure of their host countries. Would be a real shame if all that airforce base infrastructure suddenly disappeared and shortened the tactical operating range of the us airforce.

Very individualized as per need. Non-binary is an umbrella term for a whole bunch of different situations so what feels right is going to be very different for someone who feels like say a mix of masculine and feminine versus someone who has dysphoric reactions to any and all gender markers. It's going to be different for someone whose identity is more static than say someone who fluidly bounces between extremes.

If you know someone who is non-binary that's essentially just the tip of the iceberg of a whole discussion about how they personally interact with their body or the culture of gender. A lot of people seem to treat it as a full stop third category which can actually be a disservice to a non-binary person because it oftentimes just leads to a lot of new assumptions and frames out some of the ways they could be better treated than just as automatically genderless. I've heard of mixes of Mom/Dad for bigender people, just Mom or Dad for trans masc/femme folk, Completely new words that do not have cultural baggage, or just "my parent". It's not a one size fits all situation.

Her last name is Wilson... Is there some really terrible Wilson I don't know about?

Have you ever been to a kid centric drag show? They are a blast! There's a lot of overlap with traditional clowning and kids love the silly Princesess and over the top characters. It's also a safe way to show kids that gender presentation can be playful. A lot of drag queens who do kids shows love the wholesome vibes of dancing, reading to kids and being silly with little chaos munchkins just like any other performer who works with children. It's the same reasons some folk become Clowns, Santa Clauses or Easter Bunnies.

If you don't want to bring kids to a drag act that is your choice. Walk on by. Nobody is forcing anyone to bring their kid to a drag act, quite frankly nobody wants a sourpuss in the audience...but the issue is that a lot of parents and religious people who "don't want kids around drag queens" are taking that choice away from parents who want their kids to try that experience. They aren't making that decision for their kids they are taking that experience away from everyone by making those events unsafe or cancelling them through interference.

Nobody is throwing tantrums that some parents don't want that experience for their kids. Nobody cares. It doesn't impact them in the least if they just don't participate. It's like the same level of don't care if you told them you are not going to a jazz festival or something. They might say "well you are missing out on a good time' but it's not like it really matters.

Yup. Just one of her purchases put about 70,000 pounds Stirling in the hands of the lawyers that got gender recognition certificates rendered moot in the UK supreme court. Thats the landmark ruling that has since allowed bathroom, locker room , gym and sport single sex policing completely legitimate by UK authorities and forced "transgender row" in prisons to send trans prisoners to institutions of their birth sex.

She does a lot more with her money than that but that was her single biggest win so far.

This is actually part of my weekly letter writing campaign. Canada signed onto the Canada US Safe Third Country Agreement in 2002 which basically means Americans cannot seek refugee status in Canada because wherever you land on the combined territory is where you seek asylum. This means because Americans set foot in America first they cannot seek refugee status in Canada under the legal agreement. The agreement has some room for "exceptions " but it takes a lot of looking into from legal scholarship and has held a risk of American diplomatic retaliation...

Rainbow Railroad ,a Canadian based queer refugee charity, and a number of legal civil rights action groups have been campaigning for the past two years to start the process. A number of us have been writing to our MPs but with a lot of the crisises Canada has been dealing with from economic shocks and diplomatic wheeling and dealing to gain greater economic and security independence after a crash out with the US it seems to be ranked low on the agenda.

We should do more... But we're also going through a political alliance shift the likes of which would have seemed unthinkable five years ago. It's a shit situation and nobody seems to want to draw more agro.

Which is fucking killing me cuz I have so many trans American friends and I just want them to be actually safe 😭

I think you are placing the bar for facism a bit high friend. You don't have to be in government or influential in any way to be a fascist. You can be a homeless person who hasn't spoken to another person in a year and still be a fascist. You can also be a fascist without believing that you are..

Fascism is both a set of beliefs taken to an extreme and actions wittingly or not done that furthers the power or reach of an organized group who holds those beliefs. More or less it means facism can be something you do rather than something you believe strongly in. Your rank and file facist is tricked into the position.

Joe Rogan is either a facist or a puppet/ tool of facists that serves as a algorithm kidnapper into their pipeline to normalize their veiw points. Whether Rogan himself holds these beliefs personally is kind of irrelevant. It is the use to which he has been put and the damage is done.

People can dream of phones but the ability to read language while dreaming depends on where that language processing routes through the brain as it is different for different people. Most commonly people cannot read in dreams. Being able to write in dreams is even more rare.

Hey, Non-binary trans masc person in trades here.

I can tell you how I perceive different types of co-worker if it helps you want to dial in what it's like on the other side of the experience. There's layers to the whole situation and as non-binary folks we understand what we are asking for isn't automatically going to click and requires people to figure us out.

First up : Most of us end of day aren't going to rock the boat for anything less than fully agregious behaviour so calls to report other people for being mildly offensive are probably not actually going to go anywhere. Most of us are scared of being labelled "a problem" so we just take the hits when they come. If you are a boss and notice a non-binary person sticking closer to specific people and avoiding others there's a good chance that they've found the people who are safe and avoiding ones who aren't. A great accommodation that can invisibly help is just to recognize this strata and if a task nessesitates putting people together try and pair along these lines. A lot of co-workers wait until other people aren't around to let their nastier behaviour shine.

Now to co-worker types. Aside from the full on transphobe or problem persons there's a range of different stages of cool people.

The "I don't really get it" Co-worker pays lip service to the polite aspects of using pronouns. They are the type to introduce you to others by misgendering you and then flap their hands and go "Oh no sorry 'they'". We know they don't get it or don't really care. The misgendering still hurts but they are fairly benign. They make these accidents non maliciously and are afforded grace. If they step in it we basically disregard because they aren't really worth the effort of getting too comfortable around. We make these accommodations for strangers daily. Annoying but nessisary.

The "in training" co-worker is one whom is encountering their very first trans person. They want you to be their Obi wan and their enthusiasm is a bit of a double edged sword at times. It's tiring to teach people to dance when they keep stepping on your feet but the job needs doing. Some of us veiw this as our own brand of service to the cause of normalizing ourselves more widely. Some of us just don't want to be bothered. Either way, just wanting to learn is heaps better than ambivalence. If you fuck up something, don't make a big deal about it. It's not that you're a terrible person and should have known better. Our stuff takes practice and we know it's not intuitive.

The "A little too up in our shit" co-worker is excited to know the real you but looks at you as a beautiful creature in need of preservation. They might seek to advocate on your behalf or behind your back but the attempt is clumsy and often at odds with a non-binary person's desire to just get through the workday as a regular human and not make waves. Good enthusiasm sure, we're probably friends but for the love of God we're adults and we can sort out our own shit if need be.

The "Understands the Assignment" co-worker is just comfortable to be around. They don't have to be the most tuned in to all the nuance about our specific needs in ways we require more out of partners, family and friends but they treat our basic requirements as no big deal, maybe they occasionally ask questions to check in if they catch us struggling or reacting but aren't going to narc to the boss on our behalf. They either avoid all stereotypes associated with sex or in the case of trans mascs/trans femmes they treat us like one of the boys/girls. Gold standard.

So here's where the whole "but kids shouldn't make these decisions" arguement kind of falls apart... You are assuming it's the kids making the decisions.

The reality here is there is a bar that trans kids need to pass to be eligible which requires the signoff of a whole panel of adults based on the observed behaviour, self descriptive process and recorded outcomes of thousands of trans people in the past creating a rubric that professionals draw on. Being trans and the way gender is processed by trans people is actually more different from being cis than a lot of cis people are aware and the presentations of transness are actually pretty consistent. The regret rate is astronomically low - kind of to the point where it is actually unusual because of the level of care taken to predict and assess potential harm.

To get puberty blockers you need first a child who wants them, then all guardians of the child to agree it is worth pursuing. Then you require the endorsement of a psychiatrist with years of consultation and a social worker to make sure the home situation is above board and nobody is being coerced. Then you need a pediatrician to sign off on the standing health of the paitent, and endocrinologist to assess the safety of pursuing blockers...

It's not a one time thing either, you have to have routine check ins once things start and if any of these adults remove their endorsement of the paitent then it doesn't matter what the kid wants. It's not happening.

If anything medical starts going wrong long term health remains priority.

So can we please not pretend it's dumb children showing up to a tattoo parlor? It's a panel of professionals working off predictions based off of a nigh century of diagnostic data in conjunction with parents making informed decisions on behalf of their incredibly dedicated child- because these kids need to self advocate like fucking crazy at all points of the process... Which in itself tends to disqualify kids who don't absolutely need this because it's a job and a half.

This is designed as ironclad ethical assisted decision-making as can be made and people are being tricked into thinking that somehow this process is not as rigorously checked for flaws or deals with consent of minors differently than any other form of pediatric medicine. Why is that?

No, honeytrap operations are specifically a intelligence operation where assets (manipulatable agents in a target business or country) are obtained by gaining blackmail through documentation of embarrassing or illicit sexual encounters.

Sometimes a trafficking ring is just for pedos to have sex ...and while that is really fucking horrible it isn't a honeytrap.

Good time to remember that there's a lot that can be done that makes life hard for an invading force at multiple layers of passivity. You don't have to always comply. Put pressure on hotels to refuse business so they don't have comfortable spaces to sleep, deny service and food to agents at markets and restaurants, create visual systems and codes amongst your immigrant neighbours so that they can be aware when you have recently spotted an agent. Offer places to hide or stay to people who have gained their ire or are likely targets, take courses in first aid or reach out to causes that need volunteers.

If you are more bold target things instead of people. Sugar in gas tanks, nails in tires, detergent thrown on windscreens, block roads they egress through regularly with things that take a long time to move or clean up that block roads or make them hazardous. Buildings have toilets that can be backed up or alarm systems that can disturb rest, phone numbers that can be found and spammed with bot callers or printers or faxes that can be sent endless jobs of black pages. Anything and everything that can be a minor annoyance, a problem that adds up or disables their ability to move, eat, sleep or relax.

The flagrant misgendering throughout the piece, the lack of any quote or attempt to get a statement from the trans person in question, the use of "biological male", the quotation marks around "inclusive", the published unsubstantiated rumors about a person's potential personal family planning choices with over the top medicalized languaged like "inseminate"... This piece is the most hateful thing I have read in a minute and even the BBC, that shithole of anti trans reporting should be fucking ashamed at how flagrant the transphobia is.

So. As a heads up the number of kids who actually have surgery before 19 are very tiny. The only surgeries available to people over 16 but under 18 are non-destructive breast reductions. That's also available to cis girls without issue. Breast augmenting is off the table because the breasts are still developing and outcomes are usually reduced in quality so that's not a thing. Bottom surgery is usually the last thing and the average age for that is in people's early 20's and not all trans people opt for it because there are tradeoffs and some people are okay without. The standout here is usually hormones and I think there's somr things people really don't understand about this process.

Mostly it's three things

1. They don't understand how actually stable trans identity is and how unified the psychological markers are.

2. They think access is way simpler and directed by the child than it is

3. They aren't aware of the actual monetary and physical cost of NOT using Horomone. Not talking psychological. Those are definitely a huge thing too but most people have been introduced to those concepts.

On the first count : Trans people aren't subtle. There's specific markers of behaviour , the way they conceptualize specific things is actually really different from cis people. If you are talking about gender theory it gets complicated because they are dealing with something that is incredibly different under the hood. Identify is also very stable. It is vanishingly rare to find a kid who doesn't keep identifing as trans if they are past the one year mark. Usually the only changes you see to the co-hort is them identifing as a different type of transness between non-binary or binary trans and oftentimes the things they physically require don't change.

On the second. It's a panel of experts. No kid is making this decision alone. All legal guardians need to sign on and then you need to have a panel agree it's the best long term choice. Here's what that looks like

• Pediatric Doctor - Makes sure they are at the stage of puberty and the general health is at a point where blockers and maybe later hormones are a good fit.

• Social Services Worker - Makes sure there isn't something hinky with the home environment and the family is in a position to make an informed decision .

• Trans specialized Psychology - Makes sure the identity has been stable and trial run at a social level and that all the markers of a trans patient make the child a risk if they don't physically transition. They really try to hold off as long as they can.

• Endocrinologist - A specialist on horomones. Assesses the patient routinely to make sure there's not any underlying issues. If a trans kid reacts bad to blockers or later Horomones then it stops.

So for the last part.

Trans adults who don't go through horomones during the stage of their development end up needing more surgeries and more costly and invasive surgeries than those who were allowed to go through the process of developing through hormonal changes. As an example You don't need breast reductions if you never develop that tissue in the first place. If you are on blockers and then later testosterone you develop as a male and you still have all the internal bits that if you change your mind later you can swap to estrogen and have perfectly female phenotypic breasts. If you are forced to develop breasts and then remove them later you remove all the inside features and there's not really any takebacksies.

A lot of trans development looks like this. There are a lot of details and the issues when presented to the public don't give all the information for the public to make a well informed opinion on trans health. It really is kind of a specialist medicine .