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[Maximum Spin]

Ultimately speaking, commercial success is the key but if we look from this capitalistic point of view, all rules should be determined only by the whims of paying customers. It would result in stuff like - If the majority of paying customers don't want to see members of a certain race competing then... Or "no not sexy female athletes on my TV, it is not what I pay money for"!

I mean, yeah? It's not about what "the majority of paying customers want", it's about what makes the most money, so as long as the paying customers are still willing to pay you can disappoint them to whatever extent still gets you their money — but you can bet that if enough people were categorically unwilling to pay money "to see members of a certain race competing", the league would one way or another make that happen – because players need to be paid, officials and announcers need to be paid, camera crews need to be paid, uniforms need to be bought, transportation needs to be hired, and all the other employees at all levels who make the games happen all like to eat every day too, so without the money, there aren't any games.

It's not a "capitalistic point of view", it's the basic fact that people want to get value out of their own labor product.

[Starver]

Norwegians are all born with abnormal, monstrous feet, but it's also the case that all Norwegian skithletes happen to be asthmatics.

If I've picked the right episode, from memory but without checking it, relevent to the above: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0crdjjv (but maybe not to the thread - and if that's geofenced against you, there'll be a separate podcast-download you probably can find, perhaps via World Service pages...)

[None]

Can we talk about something more queer and human and less, I dunno, fabricated to stir controversy?

Like, shaving a slit into your eyebrow is apparently very gay/signaling? Or maybe it's just a coincidental style fad with my new partner's queer friends? She's very enmeshed with her local community and I got to meet a bunch of really cool people through her the other day- some mundane, some witty, some enby, and one unfathomably energetic puppy.

Perhaps it's from my point of relative ignorance, but I feel like I understand a little better how some people present or style as 'they/them' or just live their best selves with those pronouns.

Super excited to go live in a city soon with what should surely have a queer community around despite The Mormons. It'd do us well to get involved and make some friends while we're out there.

[Rolan7]

Ooh that's fun!  I'd been seeing that eyebrow-slot in GNC art but I didn't think about it much.  I should look at real life examples.

I've heard (if I have this right) that undercuts, with the hair going to one side, are popular with NBs.  Maybe because they're long been a GNC lesbian style?  I keep thinking about getting a haircut- it's been years, and I love it long, but the simple ponytail exposes my forehead too much.  besides, weather's getting hot

I'm typically wearing a nice sunhat, though, and I almost managed a couple of nice braids last month before I got distracted.  I should give that another go!

[Vector]

Eyebrow slit can be the remnant of brow-piercing, which in AFABs is usually a queer signal and has probably spread out to femmes in general... or so I perceive it.

I can see that this turned again into the cis people arguing about trans people thread. I literally thought it was AmeriPol for a minute.

[Rolan7]

Yeah.  There's so much politics (from the last 3 days!!) I could bring up here, but I didn't.  Which let the thread get overtaken with sports debate which had jack shit to do with trans people.

JK I did bring up a fragment of actual trans politics and I got completely ignored.  Perhaps I truly am half-woman after all.

[EuchreJack]

I regret that LGBTQ+ needs to fight the battle for rights, but am glad that they are finally able to fight the same battle that every other marginalized group* has ever fought. And every group has won far more than they lost, even if it's two steps forward, one step back.

Trans Supreme Court Justice when?  Even openly gay would be "progress".

*marginalized doesn't mean minority, as the unlanded, the poor, and women have also had to fight this battle.

...
Unrelated, if the "bathroom arguments" had any merit, my 90% bio female workplace would have droves of women become Trans Men for about 10 minutes each day, just to access the far greater bathroom resources they would then enjoy.  I'm a little surprised not one of them has decided to go that route, as it's 100% protected under NY law.

[Vector]

OUT OF THE CLOSETS AND INTO THE STREETS

... we have been fighting this battle for a long fucking time. the fight has been partially made invisible by the loss of a generation due to AIDS, but we have always been here, resisting. and turning it out!

[Rolan7]

It is nice to be acknowledged, EJ
We're a long way from proportional representation in government, obviously
but it'd be nice if we weren't obviously non-starters as candidates.  Someday perhaps.

As for it being our turn- sorry, literally nothing personal, but that reminded me of some liberals who tried to "comfort" me in the wake of certain deaths back in- well, it could be any month.

Spoiler: Comic should be under spoiler, but link here: https://assignedmale.tumblr.com/page/13 (click to show/hide)

I marched last week but I haven't talked about it.  It was mostly quite nice.  We were peaceful and we were briefly attacked, but nobody received lasting injuries.

We will not be silent- Stonewall was a riot.
(And trans people led the charge, no matter what heterosexual-led astroturf groups like LGB Alliance and GAG say.  Homosexuals have always been and will always be our allies, whether in victory or as victims.)

[EuchreJack]

Yeah, my expression ain't perfect.
Ideally it should include something about how it's a common struggle, solidarity, hope for the future, sympathy, etc.

I see no reason that trans should be a non-starter in at least some areas as political candidates, although incumbents always enjoy an advantage.
Oh hey, there are 77 confirmed in the US.
Most relatively minor roles, but today's Town Board member could go on to higher office.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/us/politics/rachel-levine-transgender.html

Rachel Levine's wikipedia page

And the Government page

Impressive qualifications that should probably be mentioned more often.  Sorry, I'll stop mansplaining....

[Great Order]

To me the trans rights feels a lot more bitter than the LGB rights is the thing. Maybe it's just me being in the firing line this time, or maybe it's because I was still a kid/teenager when they were being fought for so I wasn't as socially aware.

It's definitely weird seeing the same arguments being played out though. And weirder that you point this out and the response is "Yeah but *this time* we're right about the perverts in toilets"

[Frumple]

It's not so much weird as the consequence of the shits making those arguments largely being the exact same people, I think. Transfolk are being targeted with the exact same arguments that were aimed at LGB demographics because the fuckers doing it pretty much lost the fight on that part of the spectrum, and they're as unimaginative as they are hateful. When they target the next group the old crap just gets recycled.

The sad thing is it seems to be getting more traction, probably just because there's so many fewer trans people. LGB are common enough interactions with them once they started coming out the closet en masse became something you'd easily trip over. T (or enby, or whatever)... not nearly as much. Makes getting a picture of them as just another neighbor more difficult.

Make no mistake, though, prior to decades of dedicated effort by LGBT folks, the sentiment against LGB was every bit as hateful and bitter as it is against trans now. Again, it's largely the same fuckers behind it, the vitriol and violence they spit back then is exactly what they're spitting now, it was just against a less vulnerable target

E: It really does probably need to be mentioned again, but the reaction in the old days to stateside LGBT demographics was also genocide, just with an even higher (so far, anyway) body count. The AIDs pandemic was very, very pointedly ignored back then expressly so it would rip a black line of death through the LGBT population -- and it did. That wasn't done unknowingly, it was active malice directed against the gays, and to hell with whatever got caught as collateral. The way history rhymes is fucking depressing sometimes.

[jipehog]

And this is why hormone treatment and sports has to be thought over, in my opinion. Not from a starting point of actual transgendered athletes[..]

I agree with everything you said with two minor exceptions. First, I think that bearing some major event a broader discussion isn't likely to happen, and LGBTQ activist are smart to focus on their interests by pushing the envelope through legal means.  Second, seems that the government got tired from getting sued for discrimination and made this legal clarification, as oppose to initiating some new legislation on the subject.

[Vector]

To me the trans rights feels a lot more bitter than the LGB rights is the thing.

I genuinely think this is because we basically don't have any offline infrastructure. There are no "trans bars" and we get most of the hate and less of the support (because there's fewer of us). Basically nothing where we have somewhere to go where we're pretty sure that nobody will hurt us.

[Starver]

Theory: Once 'out', a gay person transgresses by making themselves look and act different from the 'normal' person that they should/could be. You can at least be aware of them, tolerate them as long as it suits you, you know precisely whee they are, should you have any concerns about them.. But the  "ultimate point" of being trans is to be at least as much like that they are not as they can, which means that they're dangerous to the less accepting kind of worldviews.


Gross simplification, based upon stereotypes and the like, but that's the kind of philosophy that is involved in such prejudices. So, a scale of acceptance (possibly from "some" to "none at all") ranging between the clearly effete/butch at one end to the "totally passing" at the other.

(Possibly an awful theory. IANASociologist, etc. And I don't resemble any of the parties involved, so it's not a first-hand perspective...)