dandelion

thank you

chocolate

haha, that sounds like me - sorry for the essay 🙈

I feel like Matt Walsh's image should be considered NSFL, lol

still good to get this above the wall of text I put before it 😄

more people will see it this way

yes, I think it would communicate the wrong idea to people, that you're critical but from a right-wing perspective.

It's also a little confusing to me personally, the way "feminazi" has been used in the past and what it conjures in my mind is an overly zealous feminist who corrects people's politically incorrect language or something like that, similar in concept to something like how "Social Justice Warrior" was a term of abuse for a while.

It is funny to me that TERFs as right-wingers are actually closer to "feminist Nazis" than the original meaning of "feminazi", lol

I'm not sure there was ever a legitimate concern about social justice movements in the U.S. being genuinely authoritarian, even if we all don't like change, being corrected by moralists, etc.

All that matters is that you are engaging in good faith and have a good heart - thank you for listening and reading my comments, it means a lot to me ❤️

I'll be here whenever you want to chat, I know it's a lot to think about and to process (I spent months working through a lot of this myself, I know what it was like to be on the other side).

My concept of Christianity is rather expansive, and Christian anarchists are often inspired by Tolstoy, who is someone I have read about and whose works I have given some attention. I can confirm they are rather different than most Christians - Tolstoy in particular rejected the Church after he saw they were committed to enabling war, which is clearly un-Christian. Dorothy Day is another relevant Christian anarchist, and I have worked with a Catholic Workers House locally, so I have some IRL exposure to these folks as well.

I tend to think "Christian" is an almost meaningless term without more context or clarification, people who call themselves Christians hold opposite views on many different positions. "Buddhism" is no different, if anything it is worse, so this isn't particular to Christianity. Nor is it particular to religion, Marx spent some time in the Communism Manifesto clarifying what he meant by "socialism" and the different kinds of socialism he was aware of - there are many such overloaded terms and concepts. It seems particularly common in any political context, where there is power struggle it seems there are struggles between meanings for a particular word.

She explicitly said in the letter that she was going to break the law. Here is one of the letters she wrote:

I understand that if you're receiving this letter, you're part of the Florida Bicameral Legislature, which means you're probably one of the people who wrote this law or voted for it. I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust. I know that you know in your heart that it's wrong to arrest me and jail me for sixty days for simply using the bathroom. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too, and that you can't arrest us away. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are no different from you or anybody else. I know that you know in your heart that the same people that go to church with you, eat in the same restaurants, go to the same schools, root for the same sports teams, watch the same movies and pray to the same God as you cannot be all bad. I know that you know that I have dignity. That's why I know that you won't arrest me.

She made an emotional appeal to the Florida legislature and hoped they wouldn't arrest her in an act of civil disobedience. Instead, they sent police to dissuade her from violating the law, and then had her arrested when she broke the law anyway.

If someone sent me a letter saying they were going to use a bathroom I would ignore it, not send cops there.

I guess you're not a Florida legislator, huh? She didn't send the letter to the reasonable, average person - she sent them to the people who voted in the law that bans trans people from using public restrooms. What is relevant here is what the people who did receive the letter would likely do in response?

Your sentence is phrased like they simply had to be there which is just validating, if inadvertently, the idea that going to the fucking washroom should be a crime

void_turtle's phrasing is accurate, the cops were only posted at that particular bathroom at that particular time because she gave advanced warning she was going to be there, they absolutely weren't going to let a trans woman flagrantly violate the law they passed (even if that means enforcing a ridiculous and immoral law - the fact they passed the law is a reason to think they wouldn't mind enforcing that law too).

void_turtle isn't implying this was the right thing for the Florida lawmakers to do, only that it is a reasonable outcome to expect from sending the letter.

she never should encountered any resistance at all, period.

She looks cis passing to me and probably wouldn't have encountered resistance if she hadn't intentionally notified the lawmakers of her intent to violate their law at a particular time and place. That's what got her arrested.

That said, many trans people don't have the passing privilege she has, and the law most impacts those people who anyone would spot as visibly trans, and thus would be at most risk of arrest. Marcy Rheintgen is engaging in civil disobedience she likely wouldn't otherwise be subject to, and it would make a better story of self sacrifice if she wasn't an ignorant reactionary who admitted she didn't actually think she would be arrested and now regrets doing it, lol.

Police were there because she sent letters in advance telling them when and where she would use the restroom in violation of the law. Otherwise not only would police not have been guarding that particular bathroom, but she would have likely passed as a cis woman and used the restroom without incident.

Gender essentialism doesn't make sense, in the end the idea behind essentialism is that "male" and "female" are two categories that are clearly differentiated by a set of essential, inherent characteristics. Basically a woman is someone who meets a set of criteria, and those criteria are never particularly work to actually include all women and exclude all non-women.

Most TERFs are biological essentialists and many will say a woman is someone who produces the large gamete (i.e. eggs, as opposed to sperm). It's not clear to me that essentialists like this have any sufficient response to the fact that there are very real (even cisgendered) women who are sterile and don't produce eggs - are they not women because they lack that defining characteristic?

Other essentialist definitions focus on other biological components, like having XX chromosomes, or having a uterus, or the capacity to bear children (again problems for how to make sure sterile women are correctly categorized as women) ... None of these definitions work, there are exceptions to all of them because human biology is very complicated and there is a lot of natural variation. (If you're curious about the science, this Nature article is fairly accessible.)

Another problem with this kind of essentialist thinking is that we clearly operate in a social context where we do identify people as "women" and "men" without knowing their chromosomes, genitals, and so on. (I notice you didn't answer my question about how you know you have XX chromosomes ... I know my chromosomes because I have taken a karyotype test, but it still didn't tell me anything about my gender.)

Gender dysphoria might have biological causes and might not be curable through therapy or brainwashing, but that doesn't exactly give us an essentialist account of gender. The biology is also not the only factor, just like gender itself is complex and multi-faceted, the social context plays a role in shaping dysphoria and the distress experienced by trans people. A trans man might feel uncomfortable wearing a dress - whatever biological causes there were for the gender dysphoria did not include specific discomfort with dresses, the dresses are an arbitrary aspect of the way gender manifests in our society. In a society where people would not be put in strict gender roles the shape of dysphoria might look different for trans people than it would in a society where gender is put upon people and enforced.

I don’t conform to the woman stereotype therefore I am not a woman

I don't think that is accurate, as you point out a tomboy is still a woman - not conforming to stereotypes doesn't invalidate your gender. You seem to understand this already, so I'm not sure why you make this statement.

I think most people see gender as very important to identity and i dont understand that.

Some people are "agender" and don't have any notable or strong gender feelings. It's OK not to understand from a first person perspective what it's like for people different than yourself. If you're really hoping to empathize and understand better, one way to help with perspective taking is to read fiction works that take those perspectives - Stone Butch Blues for example might help you understand a trans perspective better.

I might also point out that you likely don't understand what it's like for cis men who are very masculine and who enjoy having hairy bodies, broad shoulders, and a penis and so on - but you don't seem confused by the existence of cis men or their preferences ... Maybe your confusion around trans people is similar to confusion you would have with cis men, from your account I could assume it's general like that.

On a more personal note, it's interesting the way you talk about gender, it reminds me of what I was like pre-transition. I somewhat hated gender and wished people would just shut up about it, and I wished they would stop gendering me (either way). I didn't particularly care about my body and I would not have said I experienced anything like "gender dysphoria". That's not to say you're trans or that these perspectives indicate a trans experience, but it is a bit surreal for me to be on the other side of transition and to see how radically different my interpretation of my experiences pre-transition are now. Where before I might have taken gender abolitionist positions and felt some affinity for agender experiences, now I am much more clear about how unconscious gendered preferences impact my life, and while before I coped with those through repression, I just relate to them differently now.

Anyway - feel free to DM me anytime with questions, this is admittedly not the right place to explore these kinds of questions.

Yeah, this is strictly a safe space. I'm happy to continue the conversation in my DMs if you would like, however.