When I was young, I read teen girl books about growing up as if they were a guide book to being a girl I had to follow, as a means of trying to understand what being a girl meant.

Sinners, is one of the best and most important movies of all time. No question. It was not about me, as a white person, but it did speak to me on a personal level.

A whole lot of people this year crying "they can't do that, it's against the rules", because the rules always worked for them so they thought they were real.

It's pretty clear that the shut down is what Trumpists want, because they want to yank away any vestiges of control of the purse strings from Congress.

There is an assumption about transmasculinity that we are the way we are because rejecting femininity and womanhood is innately misogynistic. But what we HAVE to move through feminism to transition at all, so it's completely backwards.

I re-watched Jane Eyre recently, something that once had greatly captured me during my young life, but also a thing I had put out of my mind later in life. (I enjoyed the book and various adaptations). It was something I strongly related to but not for the reasons I was supposed to.

I've started playing A Plague Tale: Innocence (in French of course) and I'm addicted. I wasn't sure what to think about a sneaking game with swarms of rats trying to eat me, but apparently it's exactly my kind of game

People will say, with a straight face, that transmasculine people control gender academia and then turn around and call those very same people butch lesbians.

Right wingers understand that centrists are a bottomless pit of need, and will dangle out their approval just out of reach for them so that they keep chasing it. But the left isn't daddy, so the same tactics don't work for us.

I don't know what would work to convince centrists, I'm not sure they themselves are convincible short of moving the Overton window leftward. But treating them as ignorant will only exhaust you, because it's about filling their bottomless pit of need.

You can tell they are a centrist when they argue with you based on where other people are positioned. And they will say the problem with leftists is that they stick to their morals, which is a huge tell on them.

Not everyone in a moderate position is a centrist, and the way to figure it out is if you explain something and they will be either horrified, or tell you why they don't agree with you for moral reasons.

Engaging with them under the assumption that if you just explain how it hurts people is counterproductive because that is highlighting the thing they want to forget. It is not ignorance.

The take aways about centrists are: Despite what they say, their problems are of their own making and not your fault. They have the ability to solve their own bad feelings and it's something only they can actually do.

Centrists could adapt a moral stance that makes them feel rooted in who they are, instead of a relative one where they feel yanked around by other people's beliefs.

What they want is for you to want them and accommodate them over yourself, and you are under no obligation to do that. If their moral stance makes them feel bad that's ON THEM.

I have no patience for people who cannot take responsibility for their own moral stances. They want your attention and time, but you don't have to feel obligated to continue to give it to them.

This is why the louder and more extreme the right gets, the more they yell about the left. This is why telling them about the cruelty of the results only makes them more angry at the left, and why pointing that out to them is counterproductive.

So the more out of control the right gets, the more they feel out of control being pulled rightward to cruelty they feel is too far- mostly too loud instead of polite cruelty-but not unjustified.

Centrists don't feel absolved when leftists constantly give it, because the shame they feel is internal, not actually from the leftists.

That is why centrists lash out at leftists when they point out the pain right wing policies cause. It's not that they don't know, it's that they want your absolution.

When they endlessly talk about how the left should accommodate right wing views, they don't mean the right, they mean themselves. They want the left to do the emotional work of resolving the conflict in their head between their political views and the pain it causes.

Realize that centrists don't realize that the reason they feel bad is because of that internal voice of shame, and that's why they react the way they do no matter how any given leftist treats them. They make themselves feel bad, you don't need to feel you have to accommodate.

The thing they want to change is that they feel bad about their political stance, hence the never ending attacks leftward. They just want to lock people up and be thanked for it, unlike the far right who has no problem with cruelty because they have a moral stance that it is correct.

Centrist's problem isn't that they disagree with the right, but they feel bad about their moral stance, unlike the right. You can see this is true because they never ever talk about the bad effects of the right policies, only that leftists are mean to them.

I have no patience for centrists. Anyone who derides the left constantly but never the right isn't even a true centrist and doesn't need to be taken seriously. Any time they are talking about "the right" they are talking about themselves ".

Transmasculine people who are suffering outwardly from internalized dysphoria are held up as speakers of truth on gender. You can in fact guarantee that transmasculine people insecure in their identities will be held over those who aren't.

The thing that is obvious to me, but that most people are blind to, including queer people, is where transmasculine people in bathrooms fit in. If transness is labeled as perversion, then a transmasc person in a men's bathroom is labeled as sexual perversion even when using the bathroom as intended.

I started rereading Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, prompted by a discussion where we wondered where the pirate (story) originated. I recalled really liking Treasure Island as a young person, but I had memory holed my interest in pirates (genre) until my egg cracked.

But that not REAL feminism you say. Well I don't know, what is a REAL woman? Feminism is what we say it is, it is constructed of gender of critique of gender from within the same concepts that it critiques.

The thing that enrages and frustrates me the most about a lot of trans men is that they need their identity confirmed so much, they will accept being abused as long as they are abused because they are man.

Everyone has taken to saying that the problem with fascism is white men hating trans people, and I've noticed how people have dropped off cis part of white cis man.

A lot of people are confused about what political means, as is politics is a thing outside of everyday people and everyday life when that is exactly what it is. If you have people and you have a society, you have politics.

Madison Carstens, a transgender woman from Seattle, was attacked by six men in a transphobic hate crime on Sept 2. She suffered a ruptured eardrum - that may have permanently damaged her hearing - and a severe concussion that will keep her out of work for weeks or months. Do your thing, fam. (1/2)

Horrifying, insane scoop from @vivmccall.bsky.social . Five beatings of trans women have occurred in Seattle so far this year. The suspects have all been men. In at least one case, random men—strangers—have joined in on the attacks. Depraved shit. www.thestranger.com/news/2025/09...

I have no patience for centrists. Anyone who derides the left constantly but never the right isn't even a true centrist and doesn't need to be taken seriously. Any time they are talking about "the right" they are talking about themselves ".

I regularly read Masha Gessen, but unlike most of their pieces, this one ends abruptly. Where my mind expected there to be an extended conclusion summing things up there was only the sense of extended silence as they and I had nothing left to say.

A smart Judith Butler response to @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social www.thenation.com/article/soci...

As negligent news outlets continue to spread misinformation, especially regarding trans people, it is more important than ever to be wary of news sources. ICYMI @imarajones.bsky.social unpacks all of this and more in this week's episode of The Mess! 🎧 https://linktr.ee/translashmedia

There is a thing I wish for transfeminine people is to have happy and fulfilling lives, and it breaks my heart to see how cis women treat you and use you for their own ends. I know how much you want them to accept you, and that you deserve that acceptance.

Maybe the issue isn't that you don't want to scare trans people, but that YOU don't want to be scared.

I recently visited my main doctor and she is really great. One of the first things out of her mouth was how I was holding up given the state of things, and she took the time to really listen to me and what is going on in my life and acknowledge reality for me and that was SUCH a big deal.

The amount of control upper middle class parents have over their kids is costly, and in the end it was futile. The compromises that poor families make is going to be the reality soon for middle class parents as well as the systems break down.

This is pretty funny, but also why my kids use the bus exclusively. The few times they missed the bus, I ditched the line. I'd be sorry, but I am already behind getting to work on time and I am not an office worker who can get away with not being in the dot.

In fact, bumbling around and doing it badly makes people comply even MORE strongly. If you knew that you could easily comply, then you could do it and not worry. And they want you to worry as much as they want to hurt you.

This week on TransLash Podcast, @imarajones.bsky.social sits down with @kredburn.bsky.social and @ziembavision.bsky.social to discuss the DHS rolling back limitations on surveillance based on gender identity and sexual orientation. 🎧 Listen now: linktr.ee/translashmedia

I'm not saying this because it means things are hopeless, but because you need to understand what is happening. "They can't logistically round up everyone" is true, but they don't NEED to, which is what they understand and you don't.

If you think that nothing untrue could ever make it into the courthouse.... you're in denial. And if you are at all educated, you know of examples, so the question then is, why must it be true this time?

I used to listen to Ezra Klein before he left for the NYT. He has changed in ways that I now consider unacceptable, and that is not a position I reach very often. But unlike Klein, I stand by what I hold is right despite what anyone else is doing.

I have children and I can tell you from experience that teaching something to do something is 3x the work of just doing it yourself. But with kids, teaching them is the point, so you put the work in. Why are you being asked to do 3x the work on top of already being overworked?