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Just finished @r_emrys's "A Half-Built Garden" and can't stop thinking about (among other things) her vision for actually-helpful technology: algorithm-assisted decision making processes that give explicit weight to human-defined values. *This* is what I wanted to build when I got into tech.

Good story, too. Very highly recommend:
bookshop.org/p/books/a-half-bu…

#scifi

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Link Post: Trans woman who took own life after three years waiting for NHS appointment was failed by system, mother says (Current waiting list is around 5 years) inews.co.uk/news/trans-woman-t…

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"Attacks on charities that support trans inclusion are accelerating, forming part of a wider climate of hostility towards charity campaigning.

In signing the pledge, charity leaders committed to unite against this hate and offer support to those attacked. They stated that the sector must remain a safe place for all trans and non-binary people to work, volunteer and seek support."

#Trans #LGBTQ #Quakers

quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/…

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in reply to Stoat

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Adding to this 6 weeks later.

Quakers aren't allowing anti-trans orgs to hire their venues, refused permission to anti-trans entryists who tried to start a "GC Quakers" group, no longer stocking a book by a Quaker author because they are anti-trans on social media and they're actively blocking anti-trans people from their social media sites.

#Trans #Quakers

This entry was edited (2 years ago)
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I have often seen the question asked, “why are so many trans women so aggressive/combative”.

And the answer is that we don’t start out being, but we quickly learn that expecting people to be decent human beings towards us because it’s the right thing to do doesn’t work.

It only works if we make it harder to not treat us like human beings than vice versa.

I don’t feel like that’s on us to fix.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Alternative hypothesis:

"Why are all these people who are hurting and sore from the wounds their life has given them so sensitive and quick to bark out in pain when poked in old wounds...?"

Because I see a lot of the same "aggression" from chronic pain people and minority groups and I think it comes from ....

Oh gods I'm just restating what you said. Sorry.

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"imagine if the bad space was developed by a white person, and how the critique would look"

okay,
"hey, this project is weirdly transmisogynistic, and the creator seems to be aswell. this isnt a good thing"

its... its the same critique it's been getting. no serious person in this space is criticizing the project on the basis of the creator's race. it is focused on the very real, very damaging impact it is having on trans spaces that have done nothing wrong.

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Airbus open sourced their new cockpit font. Make it the default for all your embedded projects, because it's REALLY good and has real testing in difficult environments!

b612-font.com/

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Shoutout to furries who're getting het-jacketed even tho they're mostly LGBTQ; I'm sorry this shit keeps going on.

Shoutout to disabled ppl who been reading my posts & going "bitch at least you got a pogrom; we're not even ppl to this machine and they never STOPPED trying to kill us." You right, I was just busy fighting for my right to exist. I didn't mean to forget who is REALLY first, open fascism or no.

Anti-shoutout to nazis, racists, and ppl who think antifascism is a dominance game.

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in reply to ⦺ irick 🐁🐈⚩

@irick being potrayed as straight white men because it suits a larger argument justifying them being blocked from much of the fedi. The persecution is definitely ABOUT them being furries; but that won't wash in an intersectional discourse so they have to be first portrayed as straight white men possessing enormous privilege.

In essence, putting a "jacket" that says "straight white dude" on furries. "het-jacketing."

in reply to AnarchoNinaWrites

It's strange to hear about TBH. I've been made aware of a large blind spot in my situational understanding. My whole experience in an LGBTQIA+ context has also been in a largely furry one. Even the anti-furry stuff I've experienced is usually pretty explicitly queer-phobic.

To check my understanding: In the context of trans identities, would this take the form of highlighting demographicly common privileged identities in order to justify a transphobic behavior pattern?

in reply to AnarchoNinaWrites

I hadta google what pogrom was... Oh.... ok. I read. We both fight for our right to exist. To each our own fight, both valuable are we. I feel solidarity reading your Toots. No need for one ups (I loathe accusations of such, but I cant practically stop choices that're beyond me in the ideas of another). I dont/wont observe hierarchy, I refuse to play another's dominance games.

We as individuals on similar roads, in different shoes. Fight the fight we all deserve to live.

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When facing the "All we need is STEM!" approach to education, my usual response is:

Developing the vaccine was the STEM problem; distribution & getting shots in arms was the Social Science problem; getting people to trust it & combatting misinformation was the Humanities problem -- which did we fail?

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it occurred to me this morning that "anyone criticizing Ro is racist" has the same energy as, "anyone criticizing the state of Israel is antisemitic."

in effect, both are co-opting real bigotry in service of obscuring the real power dynamics at play.

Ro is a web developer and consultant. he's a member of the professional-managerial class. he has the ear of the other Big Names in fediverse moderation. The Bad Space is a contributor to the Federation Safety Enhancement Project. dude has a *lot* of power and clout in this community.

meanwhile, the bulk of the transfem people calling Ro out have to crowdfund, do sex work or do artwork commissions just to put food on their damn tables.

this isn't "trans people versus black people." it's an upper-middle-class ego-tripper and his HOA friends crybullying a bunch of powerless, poor, homeless, vulnerable people because he seriously fucked up and was called out on it.

period.

This entry was edited (2 years ago)

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in reply to Rachel, Femme Doux Naturel

meanwhile, the bulk of the transfem people calling Ro out have to crowdfund, do sex work or do artwork commissions just to put food on their damn tables.

this isn’t “trans people versus black people.” it’s an upper-middle-class ego-tripper and his HOA friends crybullying a bunch of powerless, poor, homeless, vulnerable people because he seriously fucked up and was called out on it.


that about sums it up, yeah. it’s what frustrates me most about all this

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The more I see about this "Bad Space" thing, the more concerned I get. This is like that abortive united federation of instances thingy from last year that was run by the freeze peach crowd, only this one cloaks an apparent trans eliminationist agenda in the language of social justice. Apparently a lot of people find this superficially attractive.

If you are a trans-heavy instance, you might want to consider a fediblock of ubiqueros.com (AFAICS this is the "Bad Space" main instance) as necessary self defence. I am certainly going to.

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in reply to Sarah Brown

Wait, are you talking about The Bad Space project by Ro?

thebad.space/about

I thought that was basically a directory of fedi instances with crummy mod policies. I think I remember the "united federation" drama from last year too. The Bad Space seems more like a blacklist than a badly-contrived rules manifesto.

I've started seeing some posts floating around regarding some "Good Space" thing, but all I've heard so far is the name. If it stands in opposition to The Bad Space I can see how it would be problematic though.

I think I'm confused…

in reply to Sarah Brown

@AcornSquashbuckler Some context for what's going on with The Bad Space and FSEP: hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111…


OK, let's get into it. Let's talk about anti-Blackness on this here Fediverse, "civility traps", and "why nazis wear suits."

First: there are some trans folk that love Black people, care about our safety, and want to see the Fediverse be more welcoming to Black users.♥️ These kind folk volunteer considerable time, money, effort, and social capital, to make the Fediverse more welcoming for Black folk. We love them for this.

But there are some trans folk that are super fashy, and hate Black folk.


in reply to Ben Hutchings

@Ben Hutchings @Acorn Squashbuckler Relevant to this, have also seen posts complaining that trans women (particularly) only ever seem to be welcome in spaces as long as we present as resources to be used, and that the idea that we have a right to just fucking exist somewhere seems utterly alien.

And there’s a lot of that sort of tone in the post you just quoted, along with the “you’re either helping us build our widget or you’re with the Nazis” false dichotomy.

This is a thing we have seen time and time again. When I was in politics, we were only ever engaged with when people wanted us to lend legitimacy to whatever they were doing. It pretty much NEVER got reciprocated.

We are used to being thusly shat on, but it doesn’t mean we have to be fucking nice about it.

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I mean I said a billion times, I don't even care about the blocklists?

Newsflash, I'm not even sure anyone else does care either. I think what's tweaking people is that you've got a whole bunch of instances labeled "no description. Hate speech, poor moderation" and at least some of it bullshit.

Then, when folks point that out, this becomes a larger convo about why white trans femmes are dogshit and trans fascists are a real thing, common enough to require widespread education and condemnation.

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in reply to AnarchoNinaWrites

Oh and again, all of this is set against a backdrop where the people who are trying to fuck every single person involved here over forever, are actively telling reactionaries with guns that trans people (and especially trans femmes) are pedophile sex criminals who mean to harm their children and do so just by existing.

I must confess, this is also a significant portion of why I'm upset about this.

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Been vaguely aware of the latest Fedi drama. Been trying to ignore it, but it seems to have ended up at “trans people need to stop being so sensitive to people randomly assuming they’re disgusting perverts who the rest of society needs shielding from, it was a MISTAKE you guys”.

And that just makes me sad.

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in reply to Charles ☭ is now tooting from queer.party

@Charles ☭ H @cyborg I agree entirely. Meanwhile the censors are doing the whole “this navel gazing just distracts us from the real struggle” crap which has been the excuse for transphobia, homophobia and misogyny in liberation politics since the year dot.
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It is with a heavy heart that I announce that the cis are at it again.


Pilot dies after plane crashes during gender reveal party in Mexico


Alan Francisco Rangel of the Sinaloa Red Cross told CNN that paramedics treated the pilot at the crash site in San Pedro, Navolato and then took him to a local hospital, where he died.



https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/04/americas/mexico-gender-reveal-plane-crash-scli-intl/index.html

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I discover (via @Sarah Brown's recent virality) that Republic of Ireland road signs use Transport Heavy even for white lettering. Apart from putting English-language place names in all caps, I'd been wondering what seemed different about them to my English eyes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_sig…

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Engaging in blatantly partisan fuckery to install a democratic senator in replacement of mitch mcconnell would be the most honest possible way to honor the legacy of mitch mcconnell. nbcnews.com/politics/politics-…

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