Actual genetic testing for intersex, gnc, and trans people is going to be great because everybody in the workplace is going to shuffle into the break room (”beats workin’” one of the old white guys will say) and we’ll sit down at the plastic lunch tables and management will pass out a little baggie with a tube to spit in and painstakingly go over how to seal it and affix the label. It’s just like drug testing, you did that when we hired you, except you can’t fail! And you get twenty minutes off your workday, right? Great.
I could get lucky at this point. It doesn’t always show up on tests. I wouldn’t say that my body is a fifty-fifty split. But.
Days or weeks later a couple people from management will pull me off the lanes and take me into the nurse’s office. They’ll open the door for me and say “Sorry, buddy, I know this is a hassle” and they’ll say I have to do it again because my sample looked contaminated. (I did like a 23andMe thing once and they kept telling me they thought my sample must have gotten mixed with some else’s – it’s probably just the way these labs work, the checking process for your sample is probably automated.) But I’ll grunt and say “it’s fine” and sit in a chair and spit into another tube while they stare at me. I might have to repeat the process until they figure out I used to be twins, a boy twin and a girl twin, and my genetics reflect that. (”Oh wow I didn’t know that about you,” will the manager say, trying really hard to make encouraging small talk.)
Then I’ll find out that there’s some problem with my paycheck or the ID reader thing won’t let me clock in and I’ll go to the HR desk and spend like ten minutes being bored in line while the people in front of me figure out their parking passes or lost passwords and they say there’s some red tape I have to jump through about my gender, it’s not a big deal, you just have to go get a doctor to sign off on – (awkward pause) – on one or another before I go back to work, it’s a federal regulation thing. I’ll irritably play a lot of phone tag trying to make sure I don’t use my UPT (unpaid time off) hours while I can’t work, and then go to the health center the next town over where I used to get my fillings done. The 21-year-old receptionist will give me kind of a pained look when she calls me to the front and I’ll try to act casual for her sake, or maybe I’ll feel defiant and show her I’m uncomfortable and annoyed just to make her feel bad, because she’s the closest approximate thing to a target. (although I won’t, because I’m too old for that and it’s not her fault). The doctor will give me a tight smile and say “Sorry, I know this is invasive.” Then I’ll go home and bitch about it on Tumblr.
I don’t know exactly what happens next, maybe I’ll lose my job and the state will give me a letter saying that owing to United States regulation they can’t offer Medicaid to (they’ll phrase it in the most neutral possible way, like “those with a gender or sex ambiguity“ – you know, they’re trying to make it sound like they’re still progressive and their hands are tied, all saying that gender and sex are different), and then I’ll bitch about that on Tumblr too, but whatever, I managed bipolar for so long when I was undiagnosed, I don’t need to afford my meds.
That’s about as far as my imagination goes, but even if they decided to straight-up euthanize me it’s going to be boring, and there’ll be a lot of papers to sign and a lot of shuffling around near plastic tables under fluorescent lights, and it’s not going to feel dramatic and it’s not going to feel like something with a clear way to fight. Jackbooted thugs who I can heroically punch or physically escape from will probably not show up at my house in the middle of the night (and if they do I’d really be fucked, but at least I’d get an adrenaline rush out of it).
I dunno, it might come from being a Slav and knowing people who lived under Communism, but I see the future and not only are we all going to lose our rights and die, it’s going to be slow, boring, and really fucking annoying, and because of that it’ll creep up on us.
Of course, the upside of this is that the change we want will creep up on them too. You vote, your friends vote, Republicans lose the majority. You vote (vote, goddamn you) in local elections and get better quality candidates if you don’t like the ones we got. Donation posts go around Tumblr and we can gofundme crack teams of immigration lawyers. (Also, check Charity [Navigator] for charities that work with refugees and immigrants.) (While you’re at it, here are [some] LGBT charities too, including one for intersex rights and those supporting LGBT immigrants and asylum seekers.) The ways that you can help are also not dramatic. When they come you have to notice them.
They are also vulnerable to a death by a thousand cuts. Don’t forget that.
but I see the future and not only are we all going to lose our rights and die, it’s going to be slow, boring, and really fucking annoying, and because of that it’ll creep up on us.
unpopular opinion but not liking a ship or even hating a ship doesn’t automatically make you an anti it just means you have a notp there’s a difference
this is an important distinction bc hating a ship means u can just block the damn tag or unfollow people who post it and move on w ur life –
being an anti means you feel like it’s morally imperative to make sure people who ship it Know That They’re Horrible People And Deserve To Be Harassed Because Of XYZ Reason Ship Is Problematic
difference between notp and anti is alllll in whether u think it’s your business or not if someone else ships it
NoTP: Do not get in my face with Thing I Don’t Like.
Anti: I will get in your face for liking Thing I Don’t Like
So I had a job interview today and there was a dude in the waiting room who was chatting up every AFAB person in the waiting room whether they responded or not, and kept going “Hey I’m real good at Origami Swans you want one?” and then writing his number on sticky notes before making paper cranes and handing them to his latest target before turning his attention to the next lady in his vicinity. A little sad, a lot annoying, but unlikely to be dangerous. Whatever.
Dude gets to me. We have half a conversation where he asks me personal questions and I don’t look up from my phone. I get my “Swan”. I’m the last AFAB person in the room so he’s kinda sitting there.
I get to a post about a friend needing moral and/or spiritual support before a medical procedeure, so my ADHD ass goes Oh hey, we have an animal effigy we could sacrifice to the relevant gods! So I take out my lighter and burn the swan roughly 23 seconds after the dude gave it to me, and crush the ashes in my hand because I belatedly realize there’s no sink for me to throw this in. Oh well. Purell the ashes off.
I look up. Dude, and everyone else in the waiting room is staring at me.
“You, uh. Smoke?” Dude tries.
What I Meant To Say: “No I just carry a lighter as a holdover from survival camp as a kid, and if I’m wearing synthetic fabrics that start to ravel, I can use the flame to melt them a bit so they stop.”
What I Actually Said: “No I just have one in case I need to set something on fire.”
I put the lighter away. The hiring manager comes out and calls my name. I go back and have what I think was a reasonably sucessful job interview. I come back out.
You want to know how we got Conservative Protestantism in a Gay Hat?
We got it through “shut up, check your privilege, listen, and amplify.”
Through “you don’t get an opinion on this” and “educate yourself on why I’m right before you dare claim the right to participate in this conversation.”
Through “any expression of marginalized anger is ipso-facto justified, hdu tone-police it.”
We got it by refusing to allow anyone to question the conclusions that people–fallible humans raised in conservative societies–drew from the events of their individual lives, as long as they threw the words “lived experience” around and claimed the relevant group memberships.
We got it through every single social norm put in place to silence criticism of minority voices. To automatically boost the credibility of anyone claiming to speak on behalf of the oppressed. To dismantle every vector through which that credibility could be thrown into doubt. To pressure people into taking credible speakers on faith and becoming enforcers for views they hadn’t even been fully persuaded of.
We got it because we stopped tolerating doubt of anything dressed in a legit-looking gay hat.
What got us is that humans are fucking fallible. [….]
We instilled a culture of relying on group membership, ideological allegiance, and familiarity with social-justice jargon as a proxy for credibility.… and then placed a big fat fucking taboo on every mechanism that might force someone “credible” to come up with anything more than an appeal to authority to justify the unexamined opinions they pull out their ass.
Bolding mine. I want to draw this out and underline and underscore it, especially the bit I’ve bolded.
This is a natural human thing: we want to know what the cues are, what the signs are to Indicate Who’s In Charge. And that’s what this is about, at heart: indicating Who’s In Charge, Who Makes The Rules, and What The Rules Are. We’re wired to look for that in social situations.
The problem is that all simplistic rigid attempts to do that are fucking doomed to end up in hideously abusive socially toxic systems for two reasons: one is that humans suck, and are fallible, and are wrong a lot of the time, and another is predators love to game rules and yes every single fucking “demographic” has social predators, aka people who are out to serve their own power, influence and domination of a social milieu above and beyond all other factors.
Sometimes they do this consciously, deliberately and with self awareness; sometimes it’s a manifestation of their own Issues. This is just like every other situation where this is at play, including romantic relationships, work environments, theatre organizations and strata councils. 😛 But either way, people who are doing this are absolutely going to use the rules to their own best advantage and in order to shore up their own power.
There will be potentially abusive dynamics that arise in anything that is humans interacting with other humans. This is not avoidable. And in fact if you approach a situation with the idea that it can’t or won’t happen, it’s that much more of a guarantee that it will.
But when it does, you will have no mechanism to deal with it. At all.
And this is what the loose conglomerate of “queer people who write fanfiction on the internets/do fannish shit out there and also are concerned with social issues” have in fact done.
Of course, we’ve done it because the shitty oppressive threads of society like to use as a weapon “all people arguing about this are doing it in Bad Faith and if we approach it that way we can silence them”. But the reality is that running to the other end with “no people doing this are ever doing anything but acting in Pure and Fair and Correct Good Faith and are inherently right all the time” is not a solution that ends up with “people not being shitty and abusive”: it just changes WHICH people get to be shitty and abusive. And which people are acceptable targets for abuse.
The problem is that there is no hard-fast universally applicable rules that will guarantee you are Good and On The Right Side and Doing It Right every single time. This is not how being human works.
The best you will ever get is that in a lot of cases you can make “all other things being equal” statements, with the awareness that sometimes all other things are not equal.
All other things being equal, lived experience is more relevant/weighty than outsider theory. All other things being equal, if you’re an outsider and an insider is speaking, you should probably hush and listen and not argue. All other things being equal, it’s probably a better idea to amplify insider voices than risk speaking over them.
This is sort of like how when all other things are equal, you shouldn’t hit other people. All other things being equal, you shouldn’t yell at other people. All other things being equal, it’s a better idea to be kind and patient and forgiving than the alternative. All other things being equal, seatbelts are a REALLY GOOD IDEA. All other things being equal, setting your house on fire is a REALLY BAD IDEA.
And then sometimes all things are NOT equal, and you have to adjust accordingly.
There’s no way around having to have that flexibility, that situation where things may be different than the norm.
“Sit down, shut up, and listen” is a horrible maxim and always has been.
*reinforced by “feminism” that tells men to be honest with their feelings because otherwise they are Evil Menpeople and then proceeds to shit all over them ANYWAY and laugh about “male tears.”
House Of Crows 