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carriesthewind · 2 years ago

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Oh dear.

So as some of you may know, I love to point and laugh at bad legal arguments. And as fun as legal dumpster fires are when they are made by people who aren’t lawyers but think this whole “law” thing seems pretty simple, it’s even funnier when an actual, barred attorney is the person dumping gallons of kerosene into the dumpster.

And oh boy folks, do I have a fun ride for y’all today. Come with me on this journey, as we watch a lawyer climb into the dumpster and deliberately pour kerosene all over himself, while a judge holds a match over his head.

The court listener link is here, for those who want to grab a few bowls of popcorn and read along.

For those of you who don’t enjoy reading legal briefs for cases you aren’t involved with on your day off (I can’t relate), I will go through the highlights here. I will screenshot and/or paraphrase the relevant portion of the briefs, and include a brief explainer of what’s going on (and why it’s very bad, but also extremely funny). (Also, I’m not going to repeat this throughout the whole write-up, so for the record: any statements I make about how the law or legal system works is referring exclusively to the U.S. (And since this is a federal case, we are even more specifically looking at U.S. federal law.) Also, I don’t know how you could construe any of this to be legal advice, but just in case: none of this is, is intended to be, or should be taken as, legal advice.)

First, let’s get just a quick background on the case, to help us follow along. In brief, this is a civil tort suit for personal injury based on defendant’s (alleged) negligence. The plaintiff is suing the defendant (an airline), because he says that he was injured when a flight attendant struck his knee with a metal cart, and the airline was negligent in letting this happen. The airline filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that there is an international treaty that imposes a time bar for when these kind of cases can be brought against an airline, and the plaintiff filed this case too many years after the incident.

The fun begins when the plaintiff’s attorney filed an opposition to the motion to dismiss. (So far, a good and normal thing to do.) The opposition argues that the claim is not time-barred because 1) the time bar was tolled by the defendant’s bankruptcy proceedings (that is, the timer for the time limitation was paused when the defendant was in bankruptcy, and started again afterwords), and 2) the treaty’s time limit doesn’t apply to this case because the case was filed in state court before the state statute of limitations expired, and the state court has concurrent jurisdiction over this kind of case.

I’m struggling a bit to succinctly explain the second reason, and there’s a reason for that.

You see, the whole opposition reads a bit…oddly.

This is how the opposition begins its argument, and it’s…weird. The basic principle is...mostly correct here, but the actual standard is that when reviewing a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim (which is what the defendant filed) the court must draw all reasonable factual inferences in the plaintiff’s favor. But even then, you don’t just put that standard in your opposition. You cite to a case that lays out the standard.

Because that’s how courts and the law work. The courts don’t operate just based on vibes. They follow statutory law (laws made by legislature) and case law (the decisions made by courts interpreting what those laws mean). You don't just submit a filing saying, "here's what the law is," without citing some authority to demonstrate that the law is what you say (or are arguing) it is.

Again, this isn’t wrong (although I'm not sure what it means by new arguments?), but it’s weird! And part of the reason it’s weird is that it is irrelevant to the defendant’s motion to dismiss. The defendant filed a motion stating that based on the facts in the complaint, the plaintiff has not stated a claim based on which relief can be granted, because the complaint is time barred by a treaty. There is no reason for this language to be in the opposition. It’s almost like they just asked a chatbot what the legal standards are for a motion to dismiss for a failure to state a claim, and just copied the answer into their brief without bother to double-check it.

The opposition then cites a bunch of cases which it claims support its position. We will skip them for now, as the defendant will respond to those citations in its reply brief.

The last thing in the brief is the signature of the lawyer who submitted the brief affirming that everything in the brief is true and correct. An extremely normal - required, even! - thing to do. This will surely not cause any problems for him later.

The next relevant filing is the defendant’s reply brief. Again, the existence of a reply brief in response to an opposition is extremely normal. The contents of this brief are…less so.

Beg pardon?

Just to be clear, this is not normal. It is normal to argue that the plaintiff’s cases are not relevant, or they aren’t applicable to this case, or you disagree with the interpretations, or whatever. It is not normal for the cases to appear to not exist.

Some highlights from the brief:

Quick lesson in how to read U.S. case citations! The italicized (or underlined) part at the beginning is the name of the case. If it is a trial court case, the plaintiff is listed first and the defendant second; if the case has been appealed, the person who lost at the lower court level (the petitioner/appellant) will be listed first, and the person who won at the lower level (the respondent/appellee) will be listed second. There are extremely specific rules about which words in these names are abbreviated, and how they are abbreviated. Next, you list the volume number and name of the reporter (the place where the case is published), again abbreviated according to very specific rules, then the page number that the case starts on. If you are citing a case for a specific quote or proposition, you then put a comma after the beginning page number, and list the page number(s) on which the quote or language you are relying on is located (this is called a “pincite”). Finally, you put in parenthesis the name of the court (if needed)(and again, abbreviated according to extremely specific rules) and the year the case was decided.

So the plaintiff’s response cited to Zicherman, which they said was a case from 2008 that was decided by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. However, the defendant was not able to find such a case. They were able to find a case with the same name (the same petitioner and respondent), but that case was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996, and the lower court cases associated with that case weren’t in the 11th circuit either. (The United States Reports is the only official reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court, and only includes SCOTUS decisions, so it’s not necessary to include the name of the court before the year it was decided.)

Just to be clear. The defendant’s brief is saying: the plaintiff cited and extensively quoted from these cases, and neither the cases nor the quotations appear to exist. These “cases” were not ancillary citations in the plaintiff’s brief. They were the authority it relied upon to make its arguments.

This is as close a lawyer can come, at this point in the proceedings, to saying, “opposing counsel made up a bunch of fake cases to lie to the court and pretend the law is something different than it is.”

That, “Putting aside that here is no page 598 in Kaiser Steel,” is delightfully petty lawyer speak for, “you are wrong on every possible thing there is to be wrong about.”

By page 5, the defendant has resorted to just listing all of the (apparently) made up cases in a footnote:

(skipping the citations to support this proposition)

This is where I return to my struggle to explain the opposition’s second reason why the motion to dismiss should not be granted. I struggled to explain the argument, because they failed to explain why the argument they were making (that plaintiffs can bring lawsuits against airlines in state court, and the state court have specific statutes of limitations for general negligence claims) was relevant to the question of whether the plaintiff’s specific claim against the airline was time barred by the treaty. Because 1) this case is in federal court, not state court, and 2) federal law - including treaties - preempts state law. Again, it’s almost like plaintiff’s attorney just typed a question about the time bar into a chatbot or something, and the machine, which wasn’t able to reason or actually analyze the issues, saw a question about the time to bring a lawsuit and just wrote up an answer about the statute of limitations.

We also end with a nice little lawyerly version of “you fucked up and we are going to destroy you.” The relief requested in the defendant’s original motion to dismiss was:

In their reply to the opposition, however:

“The circumstances” in this case, being the apparent fabrication of entire cases. Because courts tend to take that pretty seriously.

And the court took it seriously indeed. The defendant’s reply was docketed on March 15th of this year. On April 11th:

AKA: you have one week (an extremely prompt time frame for federal court) to prove to me that you didn’t just make up these cases.

On April 12th, the plaintiff’s attorney requests more time because he’s on vacation:

The judge grants the motion, but adds in another case that he forgot to include in his first order.

On April 25th, the plaintiff’s attorney files the following:

(And he lists the cases, with one exception, which he says is an unpublished decision.)

But he says of all of the cases except two, that the opinions…

Which is…nonsense?

First of all: if you cited a case, you had to get it from somewhere. Even unpublished opinions, if you are citing them in a brief, you are citing them because you pulled them off of westlaw or whatever. Which means you have access to the case and can annex it for the court. (There are even formal rules for how you cite unpublished opinions! And those rules include citing to where you pulled the damn case from!)

Secondly: remember that long digression I went into about how to read case citations? Remember that bit about how you include the name of the reporter (the place the case was published)? Yes, cases are published. They are printed in physical books, and they are published online in databases (e.g. lexis or westlaw). If the specific online database you are looking in does not have the case, you look somewhere else. If you have a judge telling you to get them a copy of the case Or Else, you track down a physical copy of the reporter if you need to and scan the damn thing yourself. You - literally - can’t just not have a copy of the case! (Especially published federal circuit court opinions, which multiple of these cases are! Those aren’t hard to find!)

And what kind of “online database” doesn’t include the entire opinion anyway? I’ve literally never heard of a case research database that only included partial opinions, because that wouldn’t be useful.

Maybe if we look at the attached annexed copies of the cases, that might give us some answers.

...

My friends, these things are just bizarre. With two exceptions, they aren’t submitted in any sort of conventional format. Even if you’ve never seen a legal opinion before, I think you can see the difference if you just glance through the filings. They are located at Docket entry #29 on Court Listener (April 25, 2023). Compare Attachments 6 and 8 (the real cases submitted in conventional format) to the other cases. Turning to the contents of the cases:

In the first one, the factual background is that a passenger sued an airline, then the airline filed a motion to dismiss (on grounds unrelated to the treaty's time bar), then the airline went into bankruptcy, then the airline won the motion to dismiss, then the passenger appealed. And the court is now considering that appeal. But then the opinion starts talking about how the passenger was in arbitration, and it seems to be treating the passenger like he is the one who filed for bankruptcy? It’s hallucinatory, even before you get to the legal arguments. The “Court of Appeals” is making a ruling overruling the district court’s dismissal based on the time bar, but according to the factual background, the case wasn’t dismissed based on the time bar, but on entirely other grounds? Was there some other proceeding where the claim was dismissed as time barred, and it’s just not mentioned in the factual background? How? Why? What is happening? Also it says Congress enacted the treaty? But, no? That’s…that’s not how treaties work? I mean, Congress did ratify the treaty? But they didn’t unilaterally make it!

In the second case, there’s an extended discussion of which treaty applies to the appellants claims, which is bizarre because there are two relevant treaties, and one replaced the other before the conduct at issue, so only the new treaty applies? There isn’t any discussion of the issue beyond that basic principle, so there is no reason there should be multiple paragraphs in the opinion explaining it over and over? Also, it keeps referring to the appellant as the plaintiff, for some reason? And it includes this absolutely hallucinatory sentence:

…the only part this that makes sense is that the argument is without merit. I’m not going to discuss the actual merits of the legal arguments in the opinion, because they are so bizarre and disjointed that even trying to describe them would require a Pepe Silvia-sized conspiracy board. Like the previous case, both the facts and the legal posture of the case change constantly, with seemingly no rhyme or reason.

The third one…oh boy. First, large portions of the “opinion” are individual paragraphs with quotations around the whole paragraph. What’s happening there? As far as the content of the opinion itself - I can’t. I mean that, I literally can’t. What is being discussed seems to change from paragraph to paragraph, much of it contradicting. It makes the first case seem linear and rational by comparison. The court finds it doesn’t have personal jurisdiction over the defendant so dismisses the case based on a lack of subject matter jurisdiction? But also the defendant hasn’t contested jurisdiction? And also the court does hold that it has both subject matter and personal jurisdiction over the defendant? And then it denies the motion to dismiss the case? Also, at one point it cites itself?

…also, even if this was a real case, it doesn’t stand for the propositions the plaintiff cited it for in their opposition? I’m not going to go into the weeds (honestly it’s so hallucinatory I’m not sure I could if I tried), but, for example, the plaintiff’s reply brief states that the court held “that the plaintiff was not required to bring their claim in federal court.” The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is a federal court, and there is no discussion of any filings in state courts. The closest the “opinion” comes is with the statement, “Therefore, Petersen’s argument that the state courts of Washington have concurrent jurisdiction is unavailing.” (This statement appears to be completely disconnected from anything before or after it, so I am unsure what it is supposed to mean.)

Moving on, case number four is allegedly a decision by the Court of Appeals of Texas. It includes the following line:

Honestly, the plaintiff’s attorney best defense at this point is that he wasn’t intentionally trying to mislead the court, because if he was doing this on purpose, he would have edited the cases to make them slightly more believable. (Context in case you’ve lost track: these documents are supposed to be copies of the opinions he is citing. The screenshoted line makes it clear that what he is actually citing is, at best, someone else’s summary of an "opinion". It would be like if a teacher asked a student to photocopy a chapter of a book and bring it into class, and instead the student brought in a copy of the cliffs notes summary of that chapter. Except that the book doesn’t even exist.)

The actual contents of the “opinion” are, as is now standard, absolutely bonkers. First, the court decides that it doesn’t have personal jurisdiction over Delta because “Delta did not purposefully avail itself of the benefits of conducting business in Texas.” This was despite the fact that the factual background already included that the appellant (sorry, the plaintiff, according to the “opinion”) flew on a Delta flight originating in Texas. Like, this is just wrong? It’s not even hallucinatory nonsense, it’s just facially incorrect legal analysis. Then the court starts discussing the treaty’s time bar, for some reason? Then it goes back to talking about personal jurisdiction, but now the trial court denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, and the appellate court agrees with the trial court that it does have personal jurisdiction, even though this is the plaintiff’s appeal from the dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction and the court already ruled it didn’t have personal jurisdiction? And even though on page 1, the plaintiff was injured during a flight from Texas to California, now on page 7 she was injured on a flight from Shanghai to Texas? Also the trial court has gone back in time (again) to grant the motion to dismiss that it previously denied?

Also, I’ve been trying to avoid pointing out the wonky text of these submissions, but:

Everything ok there?

Case number five is similar enough to number four that it’s not worth repeating myself.

Thank god, cases six and eight, as noted above, are real cases, so I’m going to skip them. The defendant alleges that the cases do not stand for the propositions the plaintiff cited them for, and I’m going to assume that is true, given the rest of this nonsense.

Case number seven looks legitimate on the surface. But neither the defendant nor I could find the case through any legitimate search mechanisms. The defendant looked up the purported docket numbers on PACER and found completely different cases; I was able to find a case with the name “Miller v. United Airlines, Inc.,” but it was for a different Ms. Miller, it was a California state case (not a Second Circuit federal case), it was decided on a different year, and the substance of the case was entirely different from the alleged opinion filed with the court.

On top of that, this might be the most morally reprehensible fake citation of them all? Because it is about the crash of United Airlines Flight 585, a real plane crash. Everyone on board - 25 people in total - was killed.

The individual cited in this fake court case was not one of them.

I cannot imagine conducting myself in such a way where I would have to explain to a judge that I made up a fake case exploiting a real tragedy because I couldn’t be bothered to do actual legal research.

Now, I know you all have figured out what’s going on by now. And I want you to know that if your instincts are saying, “it seems like the lawyer should have just fallen on his sword and confessed that he relied on ChatGPT to write his original brief, rather than digging himself further into this hole”? Your instincts are absolutely correct.

Because obviously, the court was having none of this b.s. On May 4th, the court issued an order, beginning with the following sentence:

That is one of the worst possible opening sentences you can see in an order by the court in a situation like this. The only thing worse is when judges start quoting classic literature. If I was Mr. Peter LoDuca, counsel for the plaintiff, I would already be shitting my pants.

“I gave you an opportunity to either clear things up or come clean. Now I’m going to give you an opportunity to show why I should only come down on you like a pile of brinks, instead of a whole building.”

We are getting dangerously close to “quoting classic lit” territory here.

If I learned that the judge in my case called up the clerk of a circuit court just to confirm how full of shit I was, I would leave the legal profession forever. Also, the judge is now also putting quotes around “opinion.” When judges start getting openly sarcastic in their briefs, that means very very bad things are about to happen to someone.

So I’m guessing the delay between this filing and the court order was because the judge’s clerk was tasked with running down every single one of the additional fake citations included in the "opinions", just to make this sure this order (and the upcoming pile of bricks) are as thorough as possible.

If you are following along with Dracula Daily, the vibe here is roughly the same as the May 19th entry where Dracula demands Jonathan Harker write and pre-date letters stating he has left the castle and is on the way home.

Also, hey, what’s that footnote?

Wait, what?

Folks, it appears we may have notary fraud, on top of everything else! Anybody have bingo?

So on May 25, one day before the deadline, Mr. LoDuca filed his response. And oh boy, I hope ya’ll are ready for this.

Hey, what’s the name of that other attorney, “Steven Schwartz”? Where have I seen that name before…

...I ran out of room for images on this post. So I'm going to have to leave this as an accidental cliffhanger. Part 2 to follow once I refresh my tea.

#ai bs #2 Stupid 2 Sanction

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retiredteabag · 4 months ago

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Dog-sitter!Toji - chapter 9

last chapter - next chapter - series masterlist

Synopsis: Toji was quite accustomed to objectifying himself for a check. And to be frank, far worse actions as well. Now he’s not sure what to do with himself after meeting the kind and generous owner of the dog he pet-sits for.

read along as Toji learns that you don't need to lose yourself in order to love and be loved.

Toji has never been the type to hold back.

He's honest and dislikes waiting to express his thoughts, even so, he had been holding in these feelings for a long time now.

How could it be that it took working together with you under extreme stress for him to realize that no one had seen him as a human quite like you had.

And for you, in the midst of your anxiety and strain, you consider him, in the small things he does such as ordering food, and in the large, working by your side to fight this battle day and night.

Dark evening nights bled into fresh mornings, unearthing the man who had threatened you had been the both of your main goals but along the way Toji grew more and more comfortable thinking of you as a friend.

In the past, when you had asked him to consider you as a friend, he would mentally roll his eyes. You were his employer, it was out of the question. But now? He found himself wondering why "friendship" seemed too gentle a term. Why is it he was wanting more?

You on the other hand, you had learned long ago to be honest with yourself. Even before, when you felt giddiness at his appearance or when you noticed yourself fixing your hair in the car, you were able to recognize your attraction to the man.

This attraction was not just physical though, he was dedicated and kind, humble and brave. You wouldn't say it, no matter how much your heart melted when you saw his nature.

Especially not now, when you needed to prioritize your dog.

Your hands shook as the attorney described the process of what defending you in court would look like. As it had turned out, despite there being a real case against your dog, there was still but a little evidence to suggest that your dog had initiated anything.

You also learned that the plaintiff not coming to you for months after the event was not a good look for them. Each passing hour, the ache in your heart would lessen. The beginnings of your chest easing helped you prepare yourself for the proceedings.

What you had not expected was how the dog that had attacked Toji was an unregistered working animal.

This would suggest that the work the dog was trained for was illegal or nefarious in some other nature.

In all honesty, you had expected the man who had shown up at your door to have been running a puppy mill of some sort.

Far from your realm of possibility was how dark the world could truly be. Toji had taken it upon himself to "do some digging", only to find that the Tosa Inu that had put your dog in the animal hospital over night had been an underground fighting dog.

The more you listened to what that could possibly mean, the sicker you felt. You were even more grateful to Toji though. He insisted that he hadn't hired a PI or anything, simply stating that he "knew a guy" who could uncover whatever had been happening behind the scenes.

Gambling was illegal in all areas of Japan but even worse was dog fighting. Several prefectures, including Tokyo had the act banned and on the level that this ring was operating, it was fair to assume other crimes were occurring behind the scenes. Betting on dog fights merely scratched the surface it seemed.

Even knowing all this, it wasn't until animal welfare organizations got involved, promising to back you in any way, that you began to rest easier at night.

You had spent what felt like an eternity yet somehow a blink of time making legal arguments in your office. You worked until your brain hurt and your eyes strained from the light of the computer screen.

During working hours, your attorney would occasionally be at your residence, working with yourself and Toji. Witnesses to Toji's injury, and your dog's behavior needed to be called forth, receipts and bills from the veterinary hospital needed to be located and confirmed for court proceedings, photographs of the scene in which the dog fighting ring was located needed to be confirmed. It all took far longer than you were expecting.

After working hours you would find yourself writing down your thoughts, hoping your lawyer was right to presume a positive fate. With the only companion you had known for years on the line however, it was a challenge to remain calm.

With his constant and unwarranted vigilance, you insisted Toji stay with you at the house. He had stayed in the guest room before and if he was so determined to help, the least you could do is offer him a place to stay.

It didn't take much convincing on your part, he stood by you through the whole ordeal.

One night, after a particularly grueling day of unburying evidence of animal abuse, you sat on your couch, tenderly stroking your dogs neck as tension built within your own.

It was funny to think that not even a month ago taking off this much work would be unthinkable to you. For the first time in your life, you had burned through all of your PTO, vacation, and sick leave. You were lucky enough to have an employer, though unperturbed by your usual overworking nature, was willing to be lenient with your schedule due to the nature of the issue at hand.

You had been mindlessly playing with the dogs ears, staring at the noiseless television before you when the gentle steps of the man you had come to appreciate so much found their way into the living room.

"Care if I join you?" He spoke softly, perhaps worried to startle you.

Attempting a carefree manner, you tried for a grin, "Of course, come, sit down."

He shuffled closer and sat to the other end of the dog, the beast, who had all his life (to your knowledge) been inconsolably frightened by men, did not hesitate to lay his head atop Toji's thigh.

The man laced his fingers through the dogs fur, smiling softly. "How are you feeling?"

Your shoulders jitter slightly as his hand brushes your own. Your dog lifts his head a moment to look at you. Huffing he plops his head back, returning to rest on the man's leg. Your heart races like a silly schoolgirl. "Good, good, everything is really looking up, you know?" You swallow a bit, "Toji, really, I know I said it before but I just wanted to make it clear how grateful I am to you. You really don't have any obligation to be here, helping me-"

The man by your side seems to straighten a bit where he sat. His hand as stopped moving and he just looks at you.

"-ever since that day at the animal hospital, when you put the needs of my boy here over your own, before that really, I have been in your debt. I hope it was never a burden... I hope you know what a comfort your presence has been."

"No." Toji's spine is taught and he takes a gulp of air before continuing on quickly, "no- no its not a burden at all. And...owe me? How could you owe me?" He laughs a bit at the notion.

Before you interject to make some painfully sweet comment, he pushes on, "You must not know-" he stares at you now, only a few breaths away, "how...lucky I am to be able to do this job, to be of some help...to...have even met you."

He's stumbling over his words, he never does that, but you make him weak somehow. You make him want to take care with his words. You make him feel so very human, so very alive.

"Well..." You fiddle with your hands, having long since moved them to your lap to avoid the strange thumping that occurs when your fingers cross. "I feel like the lucky one."

After weeks of scouring information, preparing documents, and developing exposé's, the result you could have only prayed for arrived.

The very next morning your attorney practically bounded in through the front door. She was laughing and flinging around a written notice as if it was a ticket straight to the pearly gates of heaven. Upon the address line, in bold letters, was a miracale in ink.

"COURT FILING: DISSMISSAL "

"W-what does this mean?" You smile up at your lawyer, her hoots and hollers were contagious.

"What does it mean? It means that coward of a litigant has withdrawn the charges!"

It took a moment for the elation to fill you, you repeated her words over and over, you gave her one clear look as if to ask, 'does that mean what I think it means?"

She just nodded.

You broke down in laughs. The dog wove in between your legs sensing your joy, Toji came rushing into the foyer, words of 'what's going on?' left him before he saw you grinning on the floor, scratching the dog's neck.

He smirks as if he had been counting on this the whole time, steadily walking your way until he is within arms reach. He displays one arm stretched out to you.

Under the assumption he was going to pull you up from your spot on the ground, you reach a hand to take his own and gasp when he dips to pull you into his arms. Lifting you with a steady grip.

"Toji!" You laugh, oh how it felt good to laugh once more.

The dog circled you, panting and wiggling his butt. The other person present was talking about how you had every means to come after the man with your own counterclaim, having found so much on his name. But it was all background noise. You were too caught up in the grasp Toji had on your waist. His smile. His laugh. All of it.

It wasn't until you were placed carefully back on your own two feet that you noticed the woman awkwardly grinning at the two of you.

You knew that you might still have a fight ahead of you, and it was one you would willingly take. But at this very moment, you felt incandescently happy. Nobody was taking your baby from you, and in all these efforts, it seemed you had made a close friend.

And perhaps even a connection verging dangerously close to something more.

Some cheap barbecue spot was not what you had expected when you told Toji you would get him whatever he liked in celebration.

"Honestly, I only started eating well when I began looking after your place." Toji takes a piece of beef that he grilled and placed it onto your plate, taking a spoonful of broth for himself.

"That's funny, I kind feel the same, I got so nervous that you wouldn't have anything to eat that I started planning for my groceries." You look down at the bite he prepared for you and smile.

The man before you narrows his eyes, "Well... I'm glad you started eating better." He spins his chopsticks around and flips some meat over on the grill.

"You know...you never asked for anything-" You start, recalling how you had left a note in the early days asking if there was something he wanted from the store.

"You never had to get me anything." Toji grins, "You've been more than generous."

There's a long pause occupied by the both of you taking bites of your dinner and smiling. You'd been doing that an awful, you realize and compose yourself, slightly embarrassed, "I don't think you know how much I appreciate you, Toji." You point an accusing finger at him.

And you don't know how much I love hearing you say my name he thought but kept it to himself.

"Nahhhh, I think I do. You kinda wear your heart on your sleeve."

You roll your eyes, recalling how he had seen you in so many positions, the awkward early phase, angry, teary, even sick, he had seen it all. Once again, you cringe at how much of you he knows.

"If you knew you wouldn't be calling me generous. Before I had someone I could trust with the house and dog, I was so stressed all the time. Work was piling up and I hated leaving home, knowing he would be anxious."

You recall all the nights before Toji when you tearfully considered rehoming your most loyal partner.

"Well now you're free to overwork yourself from the comfort of your office." He teases.

The two of you went on eating and poking fun at each other. Every little instance of connection between you two drew you both closer. Dark times bring out the true nature of individuals and identify exactly who someone is.

And who you were was everything he desired.

Dedicated, hardworking, kind.

Even Toji was surprised by his own unquestioning nature when it came to helping you. He would do whatever it took to see you happy.

Toji had insisted on driving you to dinner. He told you he was taking you to his favorite spot. For a time, he was embarrassed by his car, seeing you sitting in the passenger seat almost felt like a sin but you just grinned at him, and conversed easily.

He felt like a student again, driving as carefully as ever to ensure the safety of such precious cargo.

At the end of the night, when he pulled up your drive way, he told you to stay seated.

Confused, you couldn't help laughing when he came around to get the door for you.

A part of you, however small, hoped he wasn't just teasing. Hoped he might see you as more than his employer. Hoped this connection between you two would not end with the resurgence of the sun.

You tell him he didn't have to walk you to the door but he just scoffs and bares the cold by your side. The celebration was still fresh between you.

You didn't even have your hand on the door yet, everything of the day was weighing on you, the way he had lifted you up and held you, all the smiles you shared, all the easy conversation. You knew it had to stop, or you might end up deluding yourself further than you already had.

"I think it's fair to say you've gone above and beyond dog sitter status, Toji. I'm sure you'll enjoy staying at your place for once."

You had meant it lightheartedly. You really had felt bad these nights when he worked into the evening, staying in your guest room to support you. Pulling out his reading glasses for the first time in years. Despite your blithe attitude, he seemed to get all serious.

He looks at his shoes for a moment, the wind chilled you to the bone but Toji doesn't flinch.

Everything in Toji's mind was telling him to keep his mouth shut.

He was nothing special to you, no matter how kindly you told him otherwise. He had nothing to offer you. He was an ally cat of a man to your show cat of a women. He was never going to be any more than the dog sitter. Why risk the best position he had ever been granted? Why put an end to this dream he had been living?

But Toji has never been the type to hold back.

"I don't think I can keep on like this."

He doesn't look at you, still too occupied by the pavement.

"What?" Barely a beat had passed before you try to bend and catch his eye but he lifts his face to the heavens.

At one point, money was all Toji cared for, he was willing to do anything for it, but now, he was feeling things he hadn't felt since he was a boy, maybe things he never had before.

"This..." He sighs and finally gives you a resolute look, "this is my job."

You're taken aback. Replaying the words a hundred times within a millisecond. Trying to see his meaning. The words hurt, yes, you knew you paid him. Of course none of his actions meant anything more than job security. But as much as you had told yourself to be realistic, his kind and selfless attitude had started to leak into your brain, making you feel special.

You step back, still not opening the door. Wanting now to see him leave. To solidify this moment. "Right. Yes, Toji, of course."

He's still looking at you, pupils blown wide but he doesn't hesitate. "I'm afraid you’re gonna have to find someone else." in stark contrast to before, he never strays from your vision. He shakes his head as if to say, 'no'.

"What?" You repeat. Suddenly afraid of his meaning you try to take a step down to meet him at the landing but he holds up a hand. "What do you mean?"

Had it been too much? The court case? The working together? Had it only been pleasant for you? All those nights chatting on the couch, all those sweet "goodnight's"?

He pulls back his hand, one quick inhalation of the night's air was all the courage he could summon and coincidentally, all he required, "I've got these feelings that aren't exactly appropriate for the workplace."

All to be heard are the whistles of wind on the trees.

"So I think it might be best-" He's shaking his head again, not believing a word, "for you to find someone...less...attached."

It makes him chuckle, as broken as this moment makes him feel. How long has it been since he has been attached, since he has felt like this at all. How silly.

"Toji...Toji what are you saying?"

"All of this" his makes a show of his hands, "all of you, who you are, how you behave, what you do for others. I never want to lose it. It's my job, but deep down...I know it's more than that." He keeps heaving in breath, making wild motions with his hand, begging you to understand, "I want to be there to take care of the dog, I want to stay and take care of you when work is too much, I want to go for walks and eat dinner together, I don't even want to be paid anymore-GOD I cannot believe I just said that-"

He's laughing but your mind is morphing back into the dreamlike notion you had been shoving away. No words escape your lips as you grab hold of his hand, "I thought...I thought you wouldn't think of me like that..."

Now he's looking at you like you've made some ridiculous joke.

"I thought you just... liked taking care of the dog..."

He guffaws. "I do..." he inhales shakily, "believe me. I do. But... I definitely like you more."

You don't even know when his hand went to graze over your cheek but suddenly, your face is feeling warm in spite of the chill.

"I-I just can't believe- I feel...Toji I was talking myself out of this just a moment ago."

His eyes go all soft, you wonder if you had ever missed this look of his, "Is it too good to be true if I guess you feel the same?" "Gosh, Toji, No! I-" You pull his hand from your cheek and use it to cover your eyes.

Not too long ago, you felt like floating, thinking the day could not possibly become greater in importance, but life has a funny way of proving us wrong.

For a moment there on the porch, you had thought that he might kiss you. Right there on your doorstep in the cold, with your dog rolling his eyes inside. But Toji didn't, in fact, he pulled himself back. Holding your hand, murmuring that he wanted to "do this right" as he played with your fingers.

And for the second time that day, you have the overwhelming desire to dance around your house. To spin and clutch your heart as impossible hope filled your senses. Only this time, as the door closes and you watch out the window, a hand clutched to your chest. You grant yourself the privilege.

A moment to yourself of pure delight.

Hidden from your view, Toji was experiencing a very similar sensation, palm displayed across his pounding heart, he settles his head against the steering wheel and wonders if this all is a dream.

〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰〰・♡・〰

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justinspoliticalcorner · 2 months ago

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Marita Vlachou at HuffPost:

CBS on Thursday filed two motions to dismiss President Donald Trump’s amended complaint against the network over its editing of an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election campaign. Paramount Global, CBS Broadcasting Inc., and CBS Interactive Inc., the three defendants in the case, argued that Trump’s lawsuit, which was amended last month, in part, to add Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) as a plaintiff, is “an affront to the First Amendment and is without basis in law or fact.” Trump and Jackson “seek to punish a news organization for constitutionally protected editorial judgments they do not like,” the defendants said. “They not only ask for $20 billion in damages but also seek an order directing how a news organization may exercise its editorial judgment in the future,” they added. “The First Amendment stands resolutely against these demands.” Trump’s legal action stems from two different versions the network released for Harris’ answer to a question about Israel during a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast in October. Trump has accused the network of election interference over what he described as deceptive editing of the show’s sit-down interview with Harris, an assertion that has been repeatedly disputed by CBS. “The answers that aired on each news show were simply excerpts of a single answer Vice President Harris gave to a single question, and taken together, viewers heard virtually all of Harris’ answer,” the CBS motion said. CBS has also released the full transcript and camera feeds of its interview with Harris following pressure from Brendan Carr, the new chair of the Federal Communications Commission under Trump.

CBS rightly calls Donald Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against the network “an affront to the 1st Amendment.”

See Also:

The Guardian: Paramount files to dismiss Trump’s ‘baseless’ $20bn 60 Minutes suit

#CBS #Paramount Global #60 Minutes #Donald Trump #Kamala Harris #Brendan Carr #CBS Interactive #Trump v. Paramount Global #Trump v. CBS

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the-garbanzo-annex-jr · 11 months ago

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by Lincoln Brown

Beckett Law, a religious freedom advocacy group, has taken up the cause of three Jewish students at UCLA. The students claim that in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, they faced mounting antisemitism, which included barring them from access to areas of the campus. The students are also represented by Clement & Murphy, PLLC.

In the lawsuit, Frankel v. The Regents of the University of California, the plaintiffs claim that pro-Hamas/anti-Israel protesters set up barricades on the Los Angeles campus, effectively creating a "Jewish Exclusion Zone." Beckett Law states that after creating the encampment, protesters not only constructed barriers but also linked arms to prevent Jewish students from accessing the most popular areas on campus. They also imposed an ideological test, and those whose views were deemed to be sufficiently anti-Israel were issued wristbands and allowed to pass unmolested through the "checkpoints."

By contrast, Beckett law says that Jewish students were harassed and even assaulted. Law student Yitzchok Frankel was forced to find other ways to reach his classes because his route was blocked by the exclusion zone. Sophomore Joshua Ghayoum could not attend classes or study sessions because of the zone and the antisemitic activities on campus. Additionally, he was forced to listen to chants of "death to the Jews" and "death to Israel." Eden Shemuelian had trouble getting to her final exams because of the zones and had to listen to the vitriol from the encampment as she tried to study. These, said Beckett Law, are just three examples of the problems faced by Jewish students at UCLA.

Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket, stated:

If masked agitators had excluded any other marginalized group at UCLA, Governor Newsom rightly would have sent in the National Guard immediately. But UCLA instead caved to the anti-Semitic activists and allowed its Jewish students to be segregated from the heart of their own campus. That is a profound and illegal failure of leadership. This is America in 2024—not Germany in 1939. It is disgusting that an elite American university would let itself devolve into a hotbed of antisemitism. UCLA’s administration should have to answer for allowing the Jew Exclusion Zone and promise that Jews will never again be segregated on campus.

The suit notes:

Defendants have deprived Plaintiffs of the free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference, as secured by the California Constitution, through a policy and practice that treats Plaintiffs differently than similarly situated non-Jewish individuals because Plaintiffs are Jewish.

Defendants furthered no legitimate or compelling state interest by engaging in this conduct.

Defendants failed to tailor their actions narrowly to serve any such interest.

As a result of Defendants’ actions, Plaintiffs have been injured by losing access to educational opportunities, losing access to library and classroom facilities, losing in-person learning opportunities, losing the ability to prepare for exams, being denied equal participation in the life of the university, suffering emotional and physical stress that has diverted time, attention, and focus from study, and by other harms.

In addition to seeking compensation for damages, the primary goal of the lawsuit is to hold the leadership of the University of California accountable and ensure that such a situation never arises again.

As usual, "never again" is here and now. The fact that these "students" take a great deal of pride in slinging the term "Nazi" at anyone with which they disagree yet use tactics that echo those of the Third Reich is ironic and chilling. But their savage nature can be attributed, at least in part, to those who educated them.

Given that, one must ask if the regents of the University of California were merely caving to mob pressure. Did they turn a blind eye to the madness out of fear or because of the optics? Ideally, there should be nothing wrong with discussing the war and even debating whether or not Israel's response to the Hamas attack has been proportionate.

The regents, president, vice-president, and chancellors never stopped to think, "Gee, it seems to be getting awfully brownshirty around here." And if they did, they were too cowardly or indoctrinated to say a word.

#ucla #jewish students #lawsuit #antisemitism

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dolphin-diaries · 25 days ago

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Detrans Women v. Trans Men, Or: The Sanity Of Sex Change

Originally published on the Dolphin Diaries substack.

Be advised: this essay contains misogynistic, transphobic, and ableist language, especially as it pertains to pregnancy, trans men, and mental disability.

Today the court presides over a very special case, poised to answer a question that has plagued the nation since the dreaded sex wars. Several questions, actually. What are transsexuals? Do they deserve to exist? What about women? If a woman could become a man, why wouldn’t she? Do real women like being women? And when all the real women are gone—who, pray tell, will bear our children for us?

The plaintiff is a sight to behold. She is stern and clearly distressed, because she’s not smiling. She’s dressed with a presentable degree of femininity, not like a whore or anything. But there is a certain mannishness about her. Her jaw and her shoulders—must’ve been a surgery. When she speaks, you can hear she’s not really a woman anymore. Well, no, she is, but—you know. You can just tell by looking at her, she is barren inside.

The defendant is… charming. S—I mean, he, of course he looks like a ‘he,’ but of course he’s also short. Kind of too well-dressed. He has small wrists and his cranium is pronouncedly feminine. If the court looks away for a moment, the court will forget his face, but the court will certainly remember the wrists and the height and the cranium. Can you imagine, that thing can get pregnant? That was an aside, don’t record that.

When the plaintiff speaks, it is with great pain. She bears the scars of her transition with tremulous distress and speaks of tragic self-harm in a futile attempt to escape the patriarchy. She’d been hoodwinked by the trans cult and doctors—they sold her an illusion of a cure. Now she has seen there’s no such thing. The woman-ness has awoken within her and cried for the de-mammaried chest and all the babies she will never gestate. Her question is simple: why was she forced to do this; why was she lied to? Why has no one ever stopped her? Why have her doctors and friends entertained her delusion that she could somehow be a man? It is nothing short of a grave injustice that her woman-ness was allowed to be undermined. That it is now broken and impossible to heal.

When the defendant speaks, he too overflows with suffering. He was—in his soul, his mind—a man, but yet his body was not. His distress over this mismatch was profound and incurable; transition alone managed to mercifully relieve it. And he is dearly sorry for the plaintiff’s pain, but—well, it’s hardly his fault she tried to fool the system, isn’t it? Why must the one truly suffering be held accountable for the delusions of liars? Why must he be punished for the deranged ravings of belligerent, hysterical cunts?

Gender Madness

Now that the jury is well and properly annoyed with me for my inflammatory phrasing—we all have our defects; mine is that I’m a rhetorician—I shall transform from a bigoted judge into a two-headed creature, prosecutor and attorney both. A little unorthodox, you might say? But this isn’t really a courtroom. No, this argument only occasionally makes it that far; we stand most often in the court of private and public opinion.

With that in mind, let us go over the details of the case. We shall start from afar, but do stay with me; the context is vital.

Our crime(s) take place in a very particular world, one in which life is earned with labour. A citizen must perform and provide labour up to a somewhat arbitrary standard, for which they are rewarded with normal treatment. Human treatment, not-Other treatment. What exactly that constitutes depends on time, place, circumstance, and other extenuating traits the citizen holds. How that is phrased also depends, but it’s usually something to the tune of an adequate contribution for the good of something greater and more abstract. In a late-capitalist society, for instance, money is a measure of labour and a vehicle for greater social contribution, and it thus reflects the measure of allowed humanity. Even when that money is inherited, and its holder has not worked for a damn penny of it, it must reflect some great labour done in the past, by themself or an ancestor. They must’ve deserved it, because money is a measure of labour, and labour is a measure of deserving.

Capitalist profit-meritocratic logics are only one of many ways earning life with labour manifests. But this is a court case, not a lesson in history or politics or economics, so never mind that.

What happens when one cannot meet the standard of labour? What is someone who cannot contribute enough to be normal? Every human’s capacity is limited, but some limits lie at or above the arbitrary standard of labour—and some below. Failure to meet standard capacity is, quite plainly, disability. I speak specifically—now and henceforth—of the social construct of disability. Just as sex/gender, it encompasses human features which may exist regardless of social order; just as sex/gender, it constructs archetypes and social scripts that serve a purpose.

What is the social purpose of disability? Of the infirm, the crippled, the wretched? Sometimes it is to make a large performance of helping them—only those that truly deserve it, of course; never forget truly deserving, being truly in pain—but much more importantly, across history disability existed to move the disabled to the margins of society, render them vulnerable and reliant on goodwill when they cannot be cured of being insufficient. They cannot adequately contribute, which makes them dead weights on the finite resources earned by other people’s labour. That’s why deserving is so important, you see. Because, you know, all people are constantly trying to shirk their fair share of labour, don’t they? Wouldn’t we all not work if we could choose not-working? If we granted this sort of charity to just anybody; if we kept encouraging this sort of behaviour—think of the finite resources! You and I—real, honest, hard-working people—will be the last Atlas shouldering humanity! Oh, it’s unthinkable. No-no, we have to ensure the disabled demonstrate real, provable pain that renders them utterly and definitely incapable of working as much as we do. Otherwise the world will end.

The function of the social construct of disability is to draw a line as to how much labour must be performed, and how much accommodation a normal citizen requires to do it. Disability then makes it hell to seek more accommodation for less labour—in broad strokes.

But you might say, prosecutor/attorney ma’am, what does this have to do with being trans? Or with women? Or with gender, or sex, or whatever you kids call it these days?

Well, dear jury, I know it is uncouth and uncommon to call it labour, but—by which process do we create new labourers? By what mechanism do we ensure the production of citizens? How do we ascertain that the working bodies are taken care of; that workers’ homes are clean and tended to; that workers are rewarded with something to fuck? Just for now, allow that feminised labour is labour.

Entertain the notion that the organising principle of patriarchy is distribution of feminised labour. Sexing/gendering is then a social mechanism by which labour roles are assigned and maintained—and, within the current and millenia-standing incarnation of the patriarchy, these roles are assigned at birth based on the external appearance of infant genitalia, and therefore expectation of the baby’s future gestational or inseminatory capacity. From there an entire hierarchy blossoms, in which those deemed Men are called to compete for the finite resource of Women—and to split the women among themselves, deciding which women are and are not permissible to possess by which kinds of men—and all those deemed Women are called to negotiate their commodity. If a woman is capable of producing a citizen—because she can bear children, and she is of the right nation and ethnicity and race, and has no defect she can pass down—she may be a wife. A prized personal possession, like a pet that sometimes talks too much. If she cannot produce a citizen, she’s still good for some things. After all, Men are allegedly born lascivious and violent—and also enlightened and important at the same time. So their violent excesses must be tolerated, but if we force the wives to be their drywall and their fuckdoll, it may prove too much for the gentle soul. She may get damaged, and then who’ll bear the children? Naturally, women that cannot adequately contribute to society with their wombs (either because they lack the organ altogether, or for whatever other reason) must provide for men where wives cannot. Their fault, anyway. They’re not sufficiently contributing.

On that note arises a question: what if one fails to meet their birth-destined standard of labour? What if they cannot perform their proper gender adequately? Well, a wife that fails to sufficiently provide for her man is, of course, lazy. And when women utterly refuse to behave as women should, bitches be…

For brevity, let us call that queerness. I will use the word in the broadest of strokes: it is failure or refusal or both to meet the standard of assigned sex; so then, even cishetero women that disobey their husbands are, for the purposes of this courtroom, queer. One way society has tried to grapple with queerness was to seek basis in a physical abnormality, which may then provide justification for the queers’ less-than-human status as well as avenues for cures. Perhaps the foetus was exposed to an excess of the wrong kind of sex hormone in-utero. Perhaps women harbouring lesbian desire hide a secret false penis within. Perhaps it’s the humours. Often though, because queer behaviours do not really have a direct relationship to physical attributes, they are consigned to the realm of mental disability. Of madness.

While it is a kind of disability, it is a peculiar one—so, in terms of social construct, what is the nature and purpose of madness? Dear jury, you likely know the answer, intuitively if not in words. It is to regulate the behaviours and thoughts of normal citizens. When those things breach the line of madness, one is made mad, and to be mad is to be rendered unreliable, unpredictable, and incapable of adequate agency. Once one becomes mad, the sane and the normal are relieved of trying to understand one’s thoughts and needs and desires, for those are made inherently incomprehensible. Once one becomes mad, it is assumed one cannot be trusted to make decisions which the sane make all the time, because the mad are considered consummately and totally incapable of perceiving reality or of making choices that do not harm the self or others. In short, they are a danger to all, including themselves.

What is to be done with the mad? First, they must be removed from society, lest they cause harm. Then we must attempt to make them sane—that is, behaving and thinking in ways that are normal. If that is impossible, we must make them seem as sane as possible, so that their madness is confined to their own head and does not spill over. If even that is impossible, they must be removed from society permanently. Otherwise they will disquiet and disturb the sane, or worse, infect them with madness.

Notably, madness was not made to help those that may suffer from, say, psychoses or hallucinations. The history of psychiatry—and yours truly’s personal experience with it as a transsexual forced to self-inter to access transition—makes it quite clear that its primary purpose is the segregation and normalisation of the mad. At times it happens to address the needs of the mad, but generally only insofar as it can bring about their sanity and make them fit for labour production. If one’s need is irrelevant to that, it is usually neglected. At times doctors are genuinely invested in the well-being of their mad patients, and even respect them as humans—but those doctors are merely individuals acting on compassion. The system itself facilitates the opposite.

So then it becomes abundantly obvious why disobedient women, runaway slaves, homosexuals, and transsexuals either were or are psychiatric diagnoses. Indeed, to return to the court case at hand, in a patriarchal world which constructs sex/gender to be an immutable, unchangeable birth-destiny, to think that it can be changed or that you are not what was destined to you—that is madness. It must be. If it is not, then the entire sex-caste order is thrown into total instability. What if everyone decides they’re trans?! What if the men stop competing to assert manhood; what if the women refuse to be commodity?! Who can we then extract sex from? Who will be forced to take care of our homes? Who will work themselves to the bone and who will serve the nation if we cannot promise they will be rewarded with housemaids and offspring and whores? WHO WILL MAKE THE BABIES?!?!

As you can see, dear jury, obviously all of humanity will die and the world will end. Which is why, although I’m sure not everyone enjoys the patriarchy, we must tolerate it. Just like we tolerate our jobs to survive. At least, like, the core idea. We can jiggle some things around to avoid torches and pitchforks, but the sex-castes must stay. You don’t want to be the last Atlas suffering gender-work while all the kids get surgeries and hormones and don’t want to produce gender anymore, do you? We simply can’t encourage this kind of behaviour.

Within the patriarchal resource distribution system, the trans are sex/gender-disabled, and transition is then akin to an accommodation. Just like any disabled accommodation, it is seen as a resource drain that either must be thoroughly justified—for resources are always limited—or else be deemed a frivolous waste. In an attempt to incorporate trans-ness into the resource distribution system and justify the accommodation, trans-pathology emerges. The key to trans-pathology—whether it is called transsexualism or gender dysphoria or gender incongruence; whether it is considered a matter of biology, psychiatry, or soul—is that transition is justified due to a psychological/psychiatric wound. “I deserve to transition because it is the only thing making me hurt less.” Transition, then, is continuous relief to de facto gender-madness.

But I mean, within such a worldview, wouldn’t a cure always be better than just relief?

Anyway, that is why my defendant has had to prove he really deserves transition. He has suffered greatly for his defect, and although he cannot be made completely normal—that isn’t possible; we’ve tried—he is as normal as he can be. My defendant has managed to prove to the systems built within the patriarchy, beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt, that he is gender-disabled, gender-mad; that he is wholly incapable of producing sufficient feminised labour due to his condition. He is too pathologically miserable—suicidal, even. But now that he has transitioned, he is happy; he has demonstrated he can participate in the production of the family. Kinda-sorta. Close enough; it looks normal enough. Again: we’ll keep trying, but for now, this is the best we got.

Here’s the problem with my defendant’s case, though. The needs of the sane supersede the needs of the mad. After all, the sane are the ones really working and producing the resources which may then be charitably allotted to take care of the mad. The sane deserve the humanity that the mad can only temporarily, fractionally rent with their pain and the compassion that affords them.

Dear jury, have you ever wondered why it has been so pervasive for trans advocacy to state over and over again the in-born-ness of it, the low numbers of it? Only 1%, no, 5%, no, I don’t know—how are we counting? Who are we counting? Regardless, we must insist it cannot spread; that you the sane will not catch trans cooties. But what if that number rises—why, we must find a justification for why it’s actually not and it’s been counted wrong, or maybe, maybe those people would’ve been trans all along, only now they have the opportunity to pursue their trans-ness, or maybe—

Why is the argument for trans existence so entwined with asserting its rarity?

As we’ve already established, dear jury, if all the world went trans, it would end, and we would all die in a horrible extinction event. We must face the truth of sex/gender austerity. So, if trans people are to be permitted to exist more-or-less normally within a patriarchal society, they must prove beyond the shadow of a doubt: they are not contagious. Relief for the mad may only be entertained if it does not impede the sane from performing their labours.

But here stands my plaintiff. A woman, born rightfully a woman, a healthy woman, that caught the madness. She’d been contaminated by the delusion of the sex change, despite constant assurance that sex cannot be changed, and despite all the ways which we’ve devised to make transsexuals prove they aren’t lying about their stupid, ridiculous disability. And so when presented with proof of the transgender contagion, we must ask ourselves a world-endingly important question:

What If All the Bitches Went Crazy?

I mean, we all don’t want to do what needs to be done. The good of the nation—or our feudal lord, or the communist party, or Amazon Stonks Exchange—asks much of us. Some more than others, but it is what it is. Right?

The place of the woman is not terribly enviable. Sometimes we tell them of the joys of being the hand that rocks the cradle, or how much better it is to be a well-kept pet that has no worries nor responsibilities, or how empowered they are in being actually more capable then the men they must tend to—but at the end of the day, no rational individual would enjoy being treated as less-than-human, as commodity, as property. Luckily for all of us, sex is immutable and natural and we’re all just born this way, pre-destined for certain roles and behaviours. Even if we don’t want to do what needs to be done, there’s not much choice in the matter.

Except, ever-awkwardly, there stands my defendant. Very clearly a man. Very verifiably assigned female at birth.

Um.

Well, no, you see, it’s not like you can really change sex. You can just—approximate it. It’s like a costume. It’s not real, it’s ersatz, and we can always tell.

Except, no we can’t. If you saw my defendant in the streets, would you be able to tell? Would you really? What about the fact that trans men’s health concerns largely mirror those of cis men, such as risks of certain cancers and diseases, so long as those trans men are on HRT? What about the fact that they seem to live as men in society just fine?

Uhhhh.

Any attempt at normalisation of female-to-male transition arrives at two core issues at the heart of the patriarchy. Firstly, the limited resource of Woman: woman who can birth a proper citizen; woman who will clean your room and soothe your tears; woman who can be used and fucked. Secondly: who deserves to be Man? If patriarchal relation is instantiated at birth; if sex is immutable and fundamental to human character, then those born as women must be too categorically different from men to ever even slightly approximate them.

Therefore, in order to be normalised—made less-mad, shifted into the liminal space of not-quite-sane—the trans man must demonstrate and acquiesce to two things. One: he will never be a real man. Indeed, the world will not allow him to be totally interchangeable from cis men; no matter how much he looks and acts the part, at some point something will remind him he is less deserving. He cannot perform all the labour of Man, and he owes society the labour of Woman by dint of birth. To be normalised, he must acquiesce firstly to the caste system itself, and then to his precarious place within it.

But here’s the second thing—for this court case, it is more relevant. He must demonstrate the sorts of women that will become him were never good Woman material anyway. They would not birth a proper citizen anyway. They would not make good housemaids anyway. They would be too ugly to deserve getting fucked anyway. And—crucially—that these reject-women are few and marginal. Because even bad material can be utilised by men who aren’t good enough to deserve the wifely and hot ones, or else used and disposed of by men who just feel like it. Any and all waste of a limited resource must be thoroughly justified.

Unfortunately for the trans man, normalising his existence is incompatible with these dogmas in practice. Normalisation means better access to HRT and masculinising surgeries; it also means being able to exist in public as a man. A lesser man, sure—but many men are lesser men. Such is the nature of an austerity-based resource hierarchy; the place of the beneficiary is competitive.

Scandalously, I myself had a stint in trans manhood, in a place more patriarchal and trans-unaware than most Western countries. Like many trans men, I have found that if you look like a man, talk like a man, act like a man, people can’t help but treat you like a man. Even career transphobes seem to force themselves to misgender trans people at times. Modern medicine enables passing as another sex even for people completely un-androgynous by nature—and historically, even before transition was available, some managed to live as a different sex anyway, discovered only upon burial or autopsy.

And then, when the trans man is normalised, it necessarily entails that female-to-male transition becomes—little by little, however fractionally—less dangerous to access. Less unknown. Which means more people will try to access it.

But listen, my defendant says—look at this graph of left-handed people, at how the number increased once we stopped forcing them to learn writing right-handed! And the patriarchy does not care, because unlike the left-handed, he has stolen a resource owed to its men. It does not matter why the number has increased, only that it did. The trans man’s extreme rarity was part of the deal struck with trans-pathology.

But listen, my defendant says, women don’t want to be men. Women are essentially, fundamentally women. No matter how badly they do or don’t have it, they would never attempt to rid themselves of womanhood—it’s just not their nature. And that means anyone attempting to avail of female-to-male transition was never a woman by dint of trying at all.

Here we arrive at a contradiction. If trans-pathology justifies transition via an incurable ill or an innate quality, then transition cannot be justified by itself. Transition is the action in need of justification; it is not itself proof of anything. Moreover it makes all my defendant’s attempts to argue for either gender-expansiveness or feminism rather laughable. In order to assert that no True Woman would ever attempt to transition to a man, he must either claim that women aren’t really suffering due to their gender all that much, or else that they are too fundamentally different from men to even consider the option. Too incapable of shifting their self-perception of gender, and altogether too committed to having boobs.

Sooner or later in the process of trans-normalisation, no matter how pathologic its framing, it arrives at the simple truth that those born as women can live as men. And the fact women are a patriarchal commodity is hardly news or a secret. Therefore it is possible that someone—arguably—‘gender-sane,’ and thus perfectly suitable for feminised exploitation, would attempt to avail of transition. It only makes rational sense.

And after all, what about my plaintiff? Is she not a woman?

Ah, argues my defendant, but exactly. She’s a woman, and for whatever reason she decided to dabble in real disorders. And now she’s crying about the consequences. Boo-fucking-hoo. She stands here lying she was forced to do it, but he knows better—he knows how difficult transition is to access, how gatekept it is. No one is scouting vulnerable young women to pump them full of testosterone. With that I could only agree—the patriarchy does not simply let go of its resource. My defendant is none too pleased with me, though, perhaps because I have alluded his transition constitutes a kind of ‘escape plan’ for women. But: clearly fucking not. She’s here, isn’t she? Not too escaped, is she? She wasn’t really trans! And anyway, what does that highfalutin stuff matter. She’s brought us all here today because she regrets a choice she made. If she supposedly ‘escaped’ misogyny with transition, why isn’t she still a man? What kind of woman would choose to become a man, only to come crawling back?

A crazy one.

Competitive Sanity

Dear jury, I do confess: my plaintiff is, some might say, full of shit. We all are in this courtroom, but she’s directly lying more than most. Demonstrably, factually, ideologically, there simply isn’t great social incentive to force women to transition to men. On the contrary, there is great incentive to stop them from doing it. In most countries you need permission to legally transition, and that permission is secured with going through a lot of motions to ensure you really really need it. If you’re transitioning outside the legal procedure, it is even harder to argue you were forced to transition or never prevented from doing it. No, there would’ve been a lot of forces hindering the detrans woman’s alleged self-mutilation. This whole story is incredibly easy to poke holes in—and she would know that.

So why is she saying it anyway? What is she trying to get, and why does she think this is how she gets it?

Her plea, as stated, is for cessation of trans accommodation—medical transition firstly, but eventually all of it. Why? Because she bears a psychological wound. She suffers dysphoria from the results of her transition—she’s been rendered sex/gender-disabled by it. So the request is in essence a request for accommodation. Indeed, due to a total lack of detransition procedures and thus state or insurance coverage, the courts are some of the only avenues through which costs of sex-altering detransition procedures may be covered. It is not an unreasonable question: if I received a double mastectomy on insurance/government funding, so why can’t I receive breast reconstruction in the same manner?

And the answer is: because that’s not how trans-pathology works, sweetie. This isn’t a fair exchange sex/gender marketplace. Transition is a barely-granted accommodation—and a crazy thing to do.

Voluntary detransition necessarily arrives at a different issue at the heart of patriarchy: that sex/gender are supposed to be immutable and eternal, and that natural sex is inherently preferable and superior to artificially modified sex. Trans-pathology seeks to frame trans-ness as an essential attribute which causes a psychological wound that must be relieved, thereby violating the immutability dogma as little as possible and assenting to the superiority of natural sex. But to detransition is, truthfully, to transition again at least once; multiple sex changes cannot be justified within this paradigm. And, the nature of transition access ensures that in the overwhelming majority of cases, going through it is a choice made on purpose. Therefore, desiring detransition under the framework of immutable sex/gender means you transitioned by frivolity, delusion—mistake. And not just any mistake; a mistake in which you pilfered a limited-resource accommodation. Willingly destroyed your ability to adequately perform feminised labour. And, according to the naturalistic fallacy, wasted a superior version of your sex for no justifiable reason.

Just like it is insanity to think you can or should change your sex, it is madness to imagine you can just walk back and forth willy-nilly.

So if that’s the case, how does one normalise detransition? What framing is needed? How does my plaintiff place it in the realm of sanity?

Just like the trans man acquiesces to some of the patriarchal claims about him in order to shift others, so does the detrans woman. She agrees that yes, her natural sex is superior and unrecoverable. Yes, it was a mistake. What she can’t acquiesce to is the idea that she transitioned on purpose, willingly. Because if that is so, she violated the caste system in the most grievous of ways, and she stole labour and accommodation. If you know anything about the treatment of the disabled—or the homeless, or any vulnerable category that requires more accommodation than average—you would know that to admit such a thing is to cut yourself off from any further help. If the detrans woman agrees she was a rational agent when she transitioned, she agrees she is a parasite and a resource-eater. Within the patriarchal framework, she cannot argue for the right to change sex again.

If she does not present her transition as an insanity and her detransition as a cure, then that means she is mad and has been the whole time. Mad: meaning, unworthy of autonomy. She must self-denigrate and totally disavow her past self—or else be denied autonomy not only then, but also now.

She makes the claim she was mad. She finds every way in which her agency could’ve been compromised and exaggerates them until her past self appears completely incapable of making choices. All our agencies are always at least somewhat compromised, of course, for we are not totally rational agents and we are not omniscient—but that doesn’t matter, because mad choices will always be simple to present as delusions, and the sane ones will always be assumed perfectly-agented by default. And so, for instance, it may be true that the detrans woman’s doctor had a poor grasp on the mental health of women while knowing how to follow basic transition guidelines. But this is not presented as one of many circumstances which enabled the detrans woman to rethink her gender and consider transition—rather, it becomes a total superimposition of the doctor’s will upon the detrans woman’s, erasing her own decision-making capacity entirely. It becomes brainwashing.

Or let us return to my favourite topic: the patriarchy. While it is absurd to suggest the commodification and dehumanisation inherent to being a woman under patriarchy could never cause anyone to alienate from ‘woman’ altogether, it is likewise absurd to present transition as an ‘escape’ from patriarchy. The only escape there is from an all-encompassing regime is leaving for the woods. Moreover, the sex-essentialism of its caste system ensures trans men’s lives are made especially precarious, their trans status impossible to totally conceal, and any and all reveal of it threatening dehumanisation and womanisation. You can become a man—but only a queer one, and queerness is automatically degendering and unstable.

(Recall our bigoted judge. He is merely a distilled substrate of my own experiences with how trans-ness undoes humanity, disassembles one’s body into parts to be undressed and examined in the town square, and assiduously regendered.)

As is abundantly clear to anyone that’s ever transitioned, transition results in a re-negotiation of one’s status within the patriarchal caste system—with a heavy penalty. It is as silly to say ‘man’ confers no immense advantages over ‘woman’ as it is to say ‘cis’ confers no immense advantages over ‘trans.’ Both claims are brazenly, demonstrably absurd—mad, even.

So why is the trans man stating the former while the detrans woman states the latter? Why are they making absurd claims while poking at the absurdity of the other’s claim?

The fact of the matter is, both transition and detransition are fundamentally incompatible with patriarchal logics. Bioessentialist sex-destiny at birth and the naturalistic fallacy of sex are its foundational building blocks. Ability to perform sex/gender up to an arbitrary labour standard is the measure of one’s place in the hierarchy, and that hierarchy is supposed to have no mobility. Therefore patriarchy is incompatible with providing accommodation for changing sex, at all, ever. Desire for this accommodation is madness, undergoing it is disabling, and both madness and disability are utterly undesirable within resource austerity.

Then it follows that attempting to justify either transition or detransition care within a patriarchal system generates fallacies, omissions, distortions, and outright lies, because true justification—true equity with those that do not change sex/gender—is impossible. Moreover, sex/gender austerity forces accommodation requests of the trans and the detrans to become antagonistic. If the trans deserve accommodation, that makes the detrans lying and crazy resource-eaters. If the detrans deserve accommodation, that makes the trans crazy mutilators of the sane. Therefore the trans and the detrans must compete for the title of least-mad to be granted anything at all. The needs of the more-sane supersede the needs of the less-sane, because the saner you are, the more likely you are to almost-meet the arbitrary standard of labour. You are more worthy of having a finite resource spent on you.

So: poke holes in the inevitable flaws in each other’s reasoning, and whoever pokes best, wins.

And The Winner Is…

In the realm of pure logic, obviously no one. We’re all mad here. But this isn’t pure logic—this is the court of patriarchy, and the logics we’re operating under are patriarchal. Primacy in a hierarchy is won with obedience.

And in that sense, the case was rigged from the start.

You see, dear jury, you were never needed here, and your votes will not be counted. Of our plaintiff and our defendant, there is a self-evident winner in the ‘most obedient to patriarchal logics’ competition. Look how she cries for her lost womb. She’s obviously very sorry for betraying her labour function, and she says she’s been disabled—mutilated!—by those pesky resource-eaters, those burdens. Well, we certainly don’t need to be asked twice to care less! Reduced accommodation approved!

Ah, but what she really wanted was accommodation for her gender and sex. To be a woman again.

Too bad.

It is curious, isn’t it, how rarely you see allegedly pro-detrans conservative pundits advocate for detrans healthcare. No fundraisers for breast reconstruction, no calls to include voice training in subsidised procedures, no requests to incorporate legal detransition into gender marker change pathways. You’d be forgiven for thinking no such thing as ‘detrans healthcare’ even exists. Yes, yes, they’re campaigning for the benevolent extermination of detrans people as a category via extermination of transition—but what of the ones currently living? Even if they’re supposedly irreversibly damaged, don’t they deserve at least relief?

Seems like the only thing detrans women deserve is pity—not accommodation. All their pain buys them is a lack of direct violence. But in order to have that non-violence bought with pain, they must continue to be in pain; they must remain destitute. We can’t keep encouraging this sex-changing behaviour, after all. If detrans women aren’t destitute, who knows what kind of ideas the gender-obedient will get in their as-yet sane heads.

That is, in the end, the issue with trying to earn humane treatment with pain against a system that claims you have not contributed enough to deserve humane treatment in the first place. It is a continuously defensive position, with shifting boundaries you do not get to set or control—because you’re defensive. You don’t get to decide how much pain constitutes enough payment, nor how much your pain is worth.

Consider trans-pathology. Whether we call it transsexualism or gender dysphoria or gender incongruence, transition is presented as a form of relief to a psychiatric or psychological ill—that is, it is an accommodation bought with pain. Then remains a thorny question: what if the source of pain could be eliminated? Conversion therapy is deemed in poor taste chiefly because it does not work. But a total cure is always preferable to a relief. Therefore, under this logic, it must be pursued. So long as gender is what it is, and so long as madness is what it is, the search for working conversion therapy cannot cease. You can spend countless hours proving the ‘true cure’ to trans-ness is impossible, but with enough push, some hack will publish something credible-looking and science-seeming that asserts otherwise—and they’ll be more useful to the system than you.

Just look at the Cass Review.

When Abigail Thorn in her Why I Don’t Like The Word ‘Dysphoria’ essay suggested the basis for the right to transition ought to be her will—that the only justification sex-changing and gender-shifting needs is “because I want to”—she received quite some pushback on the idea. It is a common critique, one I received myself over many years, and it comes in two forms. One is an accusation of pain-ignoring. That we do not recognise the suffering of trans people, perhaps even attempt to override their stories. It’s valid that you’re not hurting, but you have to recognise that I do!

And I ask: why should the freedoms permitted to you depend on how much pain you’re in? Does this not entail that, once you’re not hurting anymore, you no longer deserve them—meaning, your destitution must in some way remain eternal?

The second critique is pragmatic: if we push this weird frivolous agency line, we won’t get what we want fast enough. We’ll die on this hill arguing we deserve autonomy while getting no help at all, when we could have at least some benefit now.

But neither Thorn nor I argue against pragmatism. I lied my way through the masturbation quizzes in the psych ward just fine. The argument made in both this essay and hers is not, as the critique fears, for the rapid dissolution of current trans healthcare and for dying on the vanguard of pipe dreams, but rather for a gradual shift of the patriarchal sex-caste construction—for rethinking sex. And there are pragmatic reasons to argue this; we can observe them right now, as fascism builds its momentum around restricting whatever trans freedoms were won with trans-pathology.

Because, I repeat: transition is fundamentally incompatible with patriarchal logics. It cannot be assimilated. Its normalisation jeopardises the basis on which it is allowed a sliver of assimilation. Thus trans-pathology is locked in a cycle whose only variable is the intensity of its eugenic extermination.

It is also a cycle in which I cannot exist with dignity (not that anyone does.) At the height of trans-pathology, I am a crazy resource-thief; at its nadir, I am a mutilated and fallen woman. So I reject this samsara, not just as an ideological dead end, but also a practical one. I reject the austerity of feminised labour; I reject that a hierarchy of resource-consumption is necessary and that no better world can exist. I reject pathetic flailing in front of impassive juries and judges, trying to prove I’m not really crippled or mad—that I don’t deserve to be treated like them. I reject that some people deserve living more than others, or deserve participation in society more than others. I reject being taxed with pain for failing to be a good-enough resource site. I reject the need for performance of justification.

And I hope you do, too.

Recommended Reading

On mad justice: Micha Frazer-Carroll, Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health.

On the treatment of the disabled as an economic and eugenic burden: Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Verkant, Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto.

#transfeminism #material feminism #detrans #detransition #feminism #sex is a social construct #disability #disability justice #mad justice

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shanieveh · 2 years ago

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“ forget me not... ”

synopsis: neuvillette, too late to confess his love to you, is drowning from the suffering and regret that came along with it, especially after knowing that you felt the same all along.

tags: gn!reader x neuvillette, depression and low self-esteem, bittersweet ending, mentions of freminet, lynette and melusines, heavily implied reader death and neuvillette also kinda wanting to die

a/n: people want this and i have came to deliver (hopefully) enjoy~ this is my first long fic that i published

How can this be….?

Neuvillette sat in the corner of his office, all your letters in his right hand. How can you say you loved him… how dare you describe the love, the passion, everything you felt for him when he can't even say it back.

How can you love someone so unlovable?

His silent cries can't match up to the violent outbursts of the skies outside. Days went by when he first found out, the melusines were scared to death about who would report it to him. The way you dissolved into water, not even seeing you for the last time—not having the privilege to have a proper funeral.

He failed you… the monsieur wasn't too sure on many things but this one was certain.

Reading your diaries, knowing your thoughts and hopes for the future. It was an invasion of privacy but also in a way… the last remnants of your existence. One such entry was that of three years ago where you first met.

Encountering this, a profuse blush colored his face. The adjectives being used "handsome", "tall" and "kind" for your first meetingwith the chief justice. Far from the truth really, although Neuvillette knew you meant every word.

You always did.

You always were an honest person.

The very first day his lavender eyes met yours, to the very last. There was never a trace of impurity or a hint of a liar. Of course, the verdict went in your favor, because to him a precious rose like you can never steal and the plaintiffs were wrong.

Reading it now, not even a slightly negative comment was made to those who wrongly accused you.

"Maybe they had their reasons, after all, I was also in need of money at that time." you wrote. Adding on that you defended the "Monsieur Neuvillette" when people called "such a man of honor and kindness" a "merciless and arrogant man".

A man of honor and kindness? Your words became running thoughts in the hydro dragon's head. That day was one of the only days he didn't cry after a trial. Neuvillette was just happy that such a person of integrity was cleared of their name.

He turned through the pages of the diary, how you taught him to socialize and even mend his relationship with the hydro archon.

"Monsieur Neuvillette was too adorable! Being with a person of lowly status and treating me with such respect and humility, he truly is the epitome of mercy and loveliness."

How can you be so blind? Anyone with eyes will know that it's a privilege to be with someone so beautiful, especially to be with someone like Neuvillette. A cold and repulsive soul. You make him sound like a good person, when in fact he isn't both good and human.

He was a monster… these words of humanity you always used to describe a monster. Why do they sound so genuine? Why do they look so real? Maybe only you can make him like that, you and only you.

A few pages later he finally saw the words…

Words that should've made him scream in euphoria… tore him to a million pieces. Because even before this he already loved you… because you had so much time to confess but never did… and never will.

"I think I'm in love with the chief Justice."

And after that, he couldn't even get himself to read, he couldn't. His eyes got so blurry to see, his heart became too heavy to feel. Why were you… why you? In a world filled with monsters, they chose an angel. They chose a soul that still wanted to live, love and give. Those demons… despicable.

Remembering his shortcomings, maybe in some way he could've avoided all of this. Neuvillette shouldn't have given you his blessing to investigate the serial disappearance case.

But that glint of adventure in your eyes… he was too soft to reject you.

It was all his fault.

Wiping his tears he looked at the last entry of the diary… Oh.

Oh.

"After this investigation, I'll finally confess to him… I surely hope Neuvillette feels the same way, I even planted some forget-me-nots to give him in the backyard so that he'll know when it rains and he weeps. I will always be here."

The chief justice didn't know what was coming to him but he started running… and only then can he see the state of Fontaine. Many flowers have wilted and only a few people were outside. What had he become..?

"What's up with this weather? It isn't even the rainy season yet?!" A shop owner complained.

"I know! My crops have been drowning these days, at this rate if it doesn't stop we'll have a famine!"

It was all his fault, his running turned to a slow walk taking in all that he had done. This was all because of him. The lonely streets, the lowered morale. This was all because—

"Hydro dragon, hydro dragon, please don't cry!"

He turned to the voice and saw a young boy in the distance. Neuvillette remembered now, his name was Freminet. That child on which you doted extremely, giving him sweets and hushing his tears. The chief justice quickly let go of his gaze and continued to walk.

"You see Freminet, it didn't work... let's go inside."

The response was that of a stoic young woman, but he just continued his legs even if they wanted to rest all to see the last thing you cared for… those flowers. And when he finally was at the destination he saw it immediately outside.

It was in the bushes, he couldn't miss it. Every corner of your house was haunted, every tiny thing was a memory. The chairs you painted, the drawings pinned in the cabinet of you and him with the melusines. It was precious. All of it. Just as you are.

He finally saw them, most were almost to bloom and some were wilted. Picking one he unconsciously kissed it, perhaps mistaking it for you. These flowers were made to remind him he was never alone, but now he is.

More alone than he can ever be in one lifetime. Your scent still filled every corner, a remembrance of the biggest "what if" in his life. Your will stated that every single thing of yours is his just as you were always his. Bittersweet was he when reading it.

Neuvillete forgot that too included your house, maybe he was too consumed with your thoughts to visit this place. He was twisting the poor flower that looked so tiny compared to his hand. Perhaps that's what it's like to be with him. It's a curse…

He continues to caress the flowers, to treat them as if they were you. You were wrong on one thing about this, even if there were no flowers he will never forget you. Never, no way! The love he has for you can destroy nations and can cause millions of sacrifices. Just to keep you, to see your smile again.

But he can't even do that, you didn't give him the privilege to do something for you. If only he knew, he would've… done everything for you. The love that can create the strongest of floods failed to protect the one person he was supposed to protect.

At that moment, he felt the waters, the ocean, his home… you. It made his crying bearable, somewhat. Grief that could surpass a lifetime, wasn't enough. Nothing he can do will ever be enough to have you again. Perhaps he should also leave this world to stop being a burden to the people… and maybe to see you again.

"Neuvillette…"

Now he was even imagining your voice, or was he? Maybe he was delusional but he still followed your voice even if it took him to an unknown path. But the end was in a small pond, where you used to keep the fish, all of which were alive and well.

"Neuvillette…?"

At this he didn't even care if was going insane, your voice sounded like a melody even if it uttered his name. It sounded like a rare jewel, a myth, a prophecy too good to be true.

"Darling?" He replied in a hopeful tone. He looked through his surroundings, no longer was he in a pond but a terrain of boundless water. In the middle was a flying Oceanid, a spirit. Was it—could it be?

"Even I could feel the heavy pouring of rain, monsieur… don't be sad."

It was indeed your spirit, a part of you that remained before that bastard—he'll make whoever did this pay. It wasn't for justice anymore, this one is for revenge.

"How can I not? When I have failed you over and over again, I couldn't even get to say…"

"That you love me?"

His eyes widened, looking at you. Even if it didn't look like you, he knew… he always did. A nod soon followed after that, it was barely noticeable even at this rate the chief justice was a bit shy saying it.

"I just don't know why you could ever say you love me, how you could even think of me so kindly. Why? How? How can you love me back?" He was clueless to what you mean.

"How can I not?"

The reply you uttered was one of a teary-eyed person. Even to this moment you still haven't accepted you had died, not when he was still alone needing you.

"Just as you said… how can I not? You out of all people my dear… know of the sacrifices we make for the person we love."

It was that moment where you took your normal form, you looked beautiful as the day he lost you. As beautiful as the day you met. And as you walked towards him, the clock ticking until your final goodbye, it was time.

"I love you Neuvillette, i always had and continue to do so." For the last time, you cupped his cheek and kissed him.

"I love you, darling from the very beginning and every single lifetime to come." He let go of the kiss and hugged you tight, closing his eyes, until you disappeared not knowing he was hugging his own.

Opening his eyes, the rain was long gone, and what remained were the flowers in the bushes, the ponds, the fish, and him. Maybe… just maybe he will bring you and the other victims to light.

Until then, this one last encounter and goodbye will make him content. He was sure… that finally his love will be at rest.

#neuvillette x y/n #neuvillette x you #neuvillette x reader #neuvilette x reader #neuvilette genshin #neuvillette x gender neutral reader #neuvillette #genshin x gender neutral reader #genshin x reader #genshin x you #genshin x y/n #genshin neuvillette #neuvillette angst #neuvillette imagines #neuvillette drabbles #genshin angst #genshin imagines

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whencyclopedia · 2 months ago

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The Gifts of Isis: Women's Status in Ancient Egypt

An inscription on an Egyptian papyrus dating from the 2nd century CE relates that the goddess Isis, bestowing gifts on humanity at the beginning of time, gave as much power and honor to women as she did to men. This brief passage reflects not only the ancient Egyptian value of balance, but the high-status women enjoyed in ancient Egypt.

Although they never had the same rights as males, an Egyptian woman could own property in her own name and hold professions that gave her economic freedom from male relatives. Girls whose families could afford the tuition were educated along with boys beginning around the age of 7 and many went on to professional careers. Women could serve as clergy, practice medicine, handle money, travel alone for business purposes, and make real estate transactions. Most women, however, were groomed for marriage, became homemakers, and were taught by their mothers to cook, clean, sew, and weave.

A wife was entitled to one third of any property that she owned jointly with her husband and, on her death, could will her property to anyone she wished, male or female. Egyptian women were equal in the court system and could act as witnesses, plaintiffs, or defendants (as one would understand those terms today). Women were accountable for crimes they committed and would have to stand trial the same as any man.

The equality of the “gifts of Isis” did not mean, however, that women had completely equal rights with men; only that they were regarded as equals under the law. Egyptian society was patriarchal and hierarchical but, even so, offered women more rights than almost every other ancient civilization. This paradigm was observed from at least the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150-c. 2613 BCE) until the fourth century and the rise of Christianity.

Education

Until the age of around 4, boys and girls were kept under the care of their mothers, usually residing in the women’s quarters of a home. After that age, boys began to learn their father’s trade or were sent to school, depending on the social class of the family. Girls remained with their mothers unless the father chose (and could afford) to send her to school. The Egyptian curriculum included astronomy, geography, mathematics, music, medical applications, reading, religion, writing, and physical education, among other subjects. Scholar Rosalie David comments:

Royal tutors taught some of the nobles’ children together with the king’s offspring, and future officials for the home and foreign services attended special training schools. Despite this hereditary pattern in the professions, some children of humble origin were able to receive education alongside the sons of the wealthy and powerful and to pursue important careers. However, education was not free, and each family was expected to pay in kind; in country areas, they would have offered the produce of the land. (205)

The” children of humble origin” could include girls if their parents could afford the cost and recognized either a certain aptitude or family need. An example might be a business the father wished to keep in the family and so wanted his daughters educated as accountants or supervisors, knowing he could trust them, but there is documentation of highly educated women who became career professionals such as Merit-Ptah, the royal court’s chief physician c. 2700 BCE and the first female doctor in world history known by name.

Women’s opportunities in ancient Egypt were determined by their social class, just as men’s were, having nothing to do with gender. Scholar Barbara Watterson notes:

The fact that, unlike women of most ancient civilizations and also of some modern countries, ancient Egyptian women enjoyed the same rights under the law as ancient Egyptian men, goes a long way towards explaining their relatively high social position. “You have made a power for the women equal to that of the men,” words written in praise of Isis, and quoted in a papyrus of the second century AD, might have been written with this in mind; and the point is one that many scholars have commented upon. The de jure rights of an ancient Egyptian woman depended on her class in society and not upon her sex. The king of Egypt was chief lawgiver and upholder of the law; and in theory everyone in Egypt, both male and female, noble and peasant, was equal under the law and had the right of access to the king in order to obtain justice. In practice, as might be expected, some, notably the rich and powerful, were more equal than others. (34)

Although the opportunity under the law was there for women to receive an education, however, did not mean that every woman could afford to seize it and many, if not most, may not even have been aware of their rights. Egypt was, generally speaking, an insular society and, especially in rural areas, a young girl may not have known that education was even a possibility. There is ample evidence, however, through correspondence, that many women could read and write even among the majority who married and raised a family.

#History #34 #Amun #Ankhsenamun #WHE #[#]

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beaunoor · 1 year ago

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higuruma hiromi x f!reader

synopsis: modern au! with both of you as lawyers. you're supposed to remain professional, but it doesn't stop the both of you from feeling a certain way when you both are in your element. sort of based on a previous imagine

wrd count: 1733

warnings: mdni! i don't really go into the actual court case bc i am lazy, female reader! light tension, smut (doing it on a desk, fingering, rough sex, tie pulling, semi-public, sort of breeding idk, praise), word "wife" used, yeah they get turned on in court in an odd way ig, barely any real plot

*extra editing will be done later, very tired while posting this

"Court is in session."

Your eyes watched as his black pant clad legs glide across the room to face the stand to give the plaintiff's opening statement. His gruff voice was tantalizing in a way you could see the confidence he oozed with his unwavering speech. This wasn't the time to ogle at your competition though. You had a job to do; to defend your own client who assumed you were preparing yourself to speak on their behalf as they shifted in anxiety. Which was wrong--you knew this was an easy civil contract case, and you just happened to be saddled with a defendant who was untruthful. Though you did not work on cases together often, discussion of them was a daily occurrence you partook in when in the privacy in your own home, so you knew the outcome was not in your favor. It didn't mean you wouldn't give it your all at least. Besides, anything was worth it to see Hiromi Higuruma in his own element.

You remembered him getting ready this morning and the image had you nibbling on your lip. You narrowed your eyes at the way his suit hugged his body. The way he spoke with assurance and the way he oozed confidence really did it for you; this was him at his best after all. You also remembered his tired eyes lingering on yours when you passed ways at the office, trying your best not to spare a glance--oh right. You were supposed to be mad at him. Your legs crossed and you looked down at the papers in front of you when you felt the faint wisps of arousal arise.

After his opening statement, you stood up from your chair, smoothing out your clothes before moving to the stand. While you talked and faced the judge and jury, Higuruma's chin rested atop of his folded hands. His eyes raked along your backside and further down to the pencil skirt you worn. He remembered taking glances at you earlier that morning. Though his morning was less than pleasant when you had not spoken a word to him. A small spat was what it was last night. It was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. He wished he could hear your voice in different circumstances.

As you slowly paced across the floor, his eyes watched your words and gestures. When you were done with your statement, you had a fiery look in your eyes and the upturn of your lip when you caught his gaze on you, which to his embarrassment had his pants tightening.

When a short recess was taken, he had walked up to you in hopes of getting you to talk him in a different manner.

"And how are you doing today miss?"

You just glanced up at him and turned away, "It'll be better when I win, Mr. Higuruma."

He faintly grimaced. He knew he had to end this quickly before you caught a worse attitude with him.

Back and forth the battle went, each more passionate in their witness testimonies and evidence. But Higuruma always had an ace up his sleeve to help his clients, always.

"B-but that doesn't mean--" You put your fingers on your temple and suppressed a groan at the defendant's admittance.

"Your attorney should've prepared you better, Mr. Soto." Higuruma jabbed.

"And you now just admitted to being aware of such knowledge of a contract. So, to the jury," he turned to their stand, "I hope you can agree that ignorance does not determine a good defense for such a company circumstance. Mr. Soto has shown his account of unjust will to comply and I hope you can see how the plaintiff is needed to be compensated rightfully so." With that he concludes his closing statement.

He’s got you good.

The gavel against its block boomed loudly throughout the courtroom signaling the conclusion of the session. You can't help but purse your lips in disappointment.

While the bailiff was trying to calm down your client you packed your things up and caught Higuruma's eye as he walked back to the plaintiff's side as he gathered his things and shook hands with his client. You proceeded to grab your things and walk out of the courtroom, feeling his presence following behind you, making himself known as he opens the door for you and you both walk out side by side in silence. Once a certain amount of distance away, he lets his hand rest on your lower back guiding you away from peering eyes.

His embrace feels warm when he's got his face buried in the crook of your neck.

"Are we okay now?" His question muffled.

"...Yeah, yeah we're good now." You say pulling away from him.

"Why do I always get the short end of the stick with my clients?" You huffed aloud as you both stood in the empty hallway of the office building.

"Maybe it's karma for getting angry at those who don't deserve it."

You stood in front of him, arms crossed and let out a scoff at his jest.

“Well, I am available to help debrief in my office if you are free at the moment. I don't have another case until later.”

“Well I wouldn't want to intrude on the 'oh so great lawyer Mr. Higuruma's time” you replied.

"You know no one likes a sore loser" He leaned in close to your face, "though if you want a 'pick me up' I always have time for you, wife."

Your eyes looked into his eyes before flickering down to his lips, you tilted your head up at him, "What did you have in mind?"

As soon as his office door was closed, you turned around to see him drop his briefcase and reach for your face with both hands and fiercely kissed your lips. Your arms went up to his shoulders and chased his lips back. He walked forward and you clumsily stumbled backwards until your legs hit the front end of his desk causing you to half sit on the desk. You let go to take a breath, and half hazardly unbuttoned your dress shirt. He got his suit jacket halfway off before he felt you reach his belt loops and unbuckled his slacks. He stopped you to do it himself while you crumpled and lifted up your skirt to expose your panties to him. As soon as his boxers were lowered for his cock to spring out, you grabbed his tie to pull his lips to yours. His hand went down to slip past your underwear to insert a finger inside your pussy. When he felt how warm and wet you were he let out a groan into your mouth and inserted another finger to work you open.

“Oh baby, you’re so wet.” he groaned out against your lips.

“Haa- you were so hot out there,” you gasped out.

“Yeah? You like me arguing with you? This pussy sure loves it, can you hear it?”

He gave a few more pumps in with his fingers before pulling them out and using the same hand to jerk his dick before bringing it to your cunt and pushed in a little before pulling it back to rub it against your opening. He heard you whine at the sensation and finally pushed all the way in.

“Hah my wife is so inpatient.”

As his hips pushed into yours, his hands grabbed around your waist, wrapping your legs around his torso, back now flat against the desk.

“You did so good out there baby. Haa- you feel so good–” he moaned out, head falling back at the feeling of being inside you.

His thrusts begin slow and stroke deep. Your toes flexed inside your pointed heels at the feeling of being dicked down so good. One hand reached up to grab onto his shoulder and the other grabbed at your breast and groped in a way to make you moan out.

He looked down at you again, loving to see you enjoy yourself and let loose in your half undone shirt, “Oh baby, I'm so close–-feel so good--ah can’t believe you do this to me.”

He lifted up your left leg onto his shoulder to reach deeper which had you whining and your eyes teared up in the new sensation, he was hitting all the right spots.

“Hiroo- I’m going to-uhn-I’m going to cum baby”

“Yeah you’re going to cum? Cum on this cock baby, you can do it baby I can feel it.” he encouraged by moving his hand down to play with your clit, rubbing it in circles to overwhelm you.

You let out a shaky breath as you felt yourself orgasm, having it reach its peak had your legs flex and shake as it washed over you. A silent scream and the tightening of your cunt kept him going, him speeding up his thrusts to reach his end.

“Ah I’m going to cum–ahh I’m cumming in this pussy.” He groaned out, exhaling deeply as he felt his cock release into the deep crevice of your cunt. He gave a few more shallow thrusts, rubbing his hips against yours slowly before stilling his movements and letting your leg down. He held your thighs as both your breathing turned back to normal. He took one of your arms, hand sliding down to your hand before placing a kiss into your palm.

“Don’t worry baby, you'll win the next one. I can't loose, I want to look cool in front of my wife.”

You rolled your eyes at him and swat at him playfully.

"Hmm I thought that debrief surely helped your attitude, maybe not?"

You groaned and looked him in the eye to pout. He leaned down to kiss at your face and made his way down to nibble on your neck, before you giggled and pushed his face away.

"Mm Hiro stop, you have to get back to work soon." you reprimanded and he huffed through his nose before he pecked your lips one more time before pulling away from your body and tucked himself away.

After you separated and fixed yourselves you turned back to him to smooth out his suit and tie.

“Thank you for the pick me up." you pressed a kiss to his cheek. "See you at home, Mr. Higuruma. . .” you said and walked out of his office.

a/n: can't believe gege trying to take my man! it's superrr late but was inspired to get this out of the drafts, tumblr kept deleting the progress and it stressed me out so it may not be the best

likes, reblogs, and comments appreciated! thanks for reading!

#jjk x reader #jjk smut #jjk fluff #jjk fic #jjk higuruma #jjk higuruma hiromi #higuruma smut #higuruma x reader #higuruma hiromi #higuruma hiromi x reader #aina’s fics

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