#hell island

[notquiteaghost]

again in the interest of clarity: binary trans people can apply for a GRC. to get a GRC, you need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, letters from two different doctors or psychologists who specialise in gender dysphoria, and evidence you have been living as your new legal gender for two years. they will not take you at your word, they want work documents and bank statements and legal correspondence that explicitly genders you correctly. to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis you need to go through a gender identity clinic.

A newborn baby girl will have to go through life with the wrong sex on her birth certificate after a registrar’s error, which her parents have been told they cannot change. Grace Bingham and her partner, Ewan Murray, were excited to register their first child at the Sutton-in-Ashfield Registration Office in Nottinghamshire last week. But, after nights of broken sleep, they failed to notice the registrar had written the wrong sex on the birth certificate until after it had been submitted. “We were horrified but assumed that, as we saw the mistake just a few seconds after it had happened, correcting it would be an easy matter,” said Murray. “But although the registrar apologised for her mistake – and the area manager also apologised – it turns out that birth certificates can’t be changed.”

this article is interesting because it demonstrates that cis people can very easily apply structural thinking to sex assignment - this couple immediately identifies that their daughter, having mistakenly been assigned male at birth by the registrar, will have administrative problems in employment, education, travel, and so on. they pretty adeptly identify the foundational role that sex assignment plays in the administrative and civil functions of a state, and how incorrect sex markers effectively produce a ‘rational’ reason for discrimination within these administrative and civil arenas:

The General Register Office (GRO), which is responsible for administering all civil registration in England and Wales, and the Home Office have both confirmed that Lilah’s birth certificate cannot be reissued, although an amendment can be made in the margin of the original document. But Bingham said this is not enough. “People reading a birth certificate might easily miss a tiny note in the margin – which means that Lilah could be regarded as male when she applies for school, her passport, for jobs – for everything that she needs a full birth certificate for.”

And given that this was published in The Guardian, this article makes zero mention as to why it’s impossible for this couple to receive an updated birth certificate with correct information (something the author notes was possible to do a year ago), but the reason is obviously transphobia. 

Now one might ask why there’s no exception for cis people whose birth certificates were recorded incorrectly at birth, but this reveals the instability of cissexualism. How would you determine who is a cis person with a mistaken birth certificate, versus a trans person who wants to change their mistaken sex assignment record? Sure, you could say well, this is an infant, of course she’s “really” “biologically” female (something the parents argue in the article as grounds for having their child’s birth certificate re-issued), but 1) that certainly can’t be argued for in all cases, 2) 'biological sex' is understood by medical doctors as alterable through hormones and surgery, which trans people are often required to undergo in order to change their records, and 3) binary sex assignment is already imprecise and discretionary, particularly if infants have sex characteristics that don’t conform to binary F/M assignment standards (which is part of how the category of intersex emerges, framing this failure to conform to state census categories as a biological defect - and in fact, many intersex people do not discover they are intersex until the onset of puberty or later, at which point they are even less in luck if they want to change their sex assignment - and if they don’t, if they are cis but have sex characteristics that do not conform to cis standards, they will be discriminated against anyway). 

Even setting aside the issue of transgender and intersex people for a moment, states fuck up all the time in administration! you've probably either experienced this directly or know someone who's had some kind of record fucked up by the government at some point in their life. If you get married they could fuck up changing your last name, fuck up your disability status, record your social insurance number wrong, print the wrong address on your driver’s license, fail to acknowledge you as a dependent when filing taxes, incorrectly mark you as having graduated when you’re still a student, fuck up your immigration paperwork, record your name wrong during immigration, etc etc into infinity, and this is not even getting into errors that occur when different levels of government pass information between one another. This level of administrative rigidity is purely to punish people who fail to perform cissexualism correctly, and in the case of this couple's child, the administrative error of the state is imputed to them as a personal failure that she and her parents will now have to deal with for the rest of their lives. 

I think the ultimate analysis is not that transphobia will become less precise and hit more "wrong" targets as it expands its reach, but that this is the exact same operational logic as all other liberal state measures - if you encounter a systemic issue, it’s your fault for not avoiding it, fuck you, go away. You’re poor because you’re lazy, you’re unhoused because you’re lazy, you’re disabled because you’re lazy, and your daughter is now administratively transsexual because you’re lazy. In this case, we don’t even need to assume the intentions of the state - they outright say it:

The family complained to the GRO but was told the mistake was their responsibility and could not be fully rectified. “The duty to ensure that information recorded in any particular entry is true is the responsibility of the person providing the information and not of the registrar general or the registrar recording the birth,” the GRO said.

[youssefguedira]

my last post lost traction so here we are again!

mermaids, a trans charity here, is currently running an email campaign for people in the UK to write to their MP and urging them to pressure the government to change the current draft guidance for trans kids in schools here. the current draft, among other things, states that schools "do not have to accept a child’s request to socially transition, and that teachers or pupils should not be pressured into using different pronouns."

the email is already written for you and can be modified as you choose. all it takes is your name, email address, and UK postcode. it's a 30 second process. if you're in the UK and are able please take the time to do so! their goal is 10000 emails and they're at 8946 at the time of writing this (they were at 8901 when i posted about this before, so thank you to everyone who did it last time!)

you may want to wait until after the election, and i don't know whether the campaign will change at all, but if you're concerned about the current state of trans rights in the uk (which is definitely worrying), this is a small thing you can do to help!

if you're not in the uk, reblogs would be appreciated! and if you're able to, donate to mermaids! they provide support to trans young people and their families in a lot of different ways, which is needed now more than ever.

[the-gershomite]

Dark Horse Presents: Hellboy #151 -February 2000-

Hellboy "The Nature of the Beast"

story and art by Mike Mignola

letters by Pat Brosseau

Doc Thunder "Terror from Planet X"

story, art and letters by Jason Armstrong

"Hell Island" A Vonshollywood retro-classic

story, art, and letters by Pete Von Sholly

[eyes-onthehorizon]

kemi. ffs.

[legosloth16]

Live footage of living in the UK:

[transcerat0ps]

wow rishi. i wonder what might have happened during a devastating global pandemic that has meant more people are living with long term illness. what a mystery

[baddingtonbitch]

every study about australian men is the worst thing you'll ever read. two studies i've seen in the past couple of days make me want to join a convent.

[brw]

"uhhhh but Scotland didn't vote for independence in most recent poll!!" survation has been laughed at before for its poor polling + true north, as to its name, is based primarily in the north of scotland. most of Scotland's population is further south in glasgow and edinburgh i know people know this but this doesn't mean shit i hate people taking this as gospel shut uppppppp.

[notquiteaghost]

GB news is absolutely not a reliable source & this guy's credentials are he wrote an unofficial biography of charles a few years ago. he is an investigative journalist but he did also recently publish a biography of jeremy corbyn that has been widely criticised for being factually incorrect. charles IS big into alternative medicine but we do not Know if he's actually gonna refuse chemo when he's the one with cancer. this guy is guessing. i am primarily reblogging this post to say it is so fucking jarring to live in the uk & hear actual journalists speculate about the royals on their actual news programs in the exact same way i see fans speculate about fictional characters in fandom spaces. especially when there are a hundred far more pressing things happening that actually effect the average person's life.

potions??? lmaoo rip bozo

[youssefguedira]

hey the uk petition to not ban trans people from receiving care in mainstream hospital wards, and all other petitions, are gonna close on may 30th (next thursday) because of the election, so if you haven't signed please do that. it's reached the threshold to get a response from the government (10,000) but is still a long way from actually being debated (100,000). it's at 14,695 at the time of writing this

[man-made-misery]

British people are so fucking annoying!!!

My uncle shared this post on Facebook (under the cut because it's racist as shit)

Which is nice and easy for him to say, living in a safe country where he's the majority. God fucking forbid England becomes the victim of an attack from another country and he has to seek asylum.

I don't see why "people deserve to live somewhere safe" is a controversial opinion. Asylum seekers in England get £49 if their accommodation doesn't provide food, and £8 if it does (!!) Nobody is choosing to live on £8 a week, in an unfamiliar country, where they're constantly exposed to people telling them they're not wanted.

Look at the words "winter fuel payments". We shouldn't need extra payments from the government to be able to heat our houses!!! You know why we do? It's not because of a family of 3 seeking refuge from a war torn country. It's because the energy suppliers have put prices up so much. The government created a cost of living crisis and used immigration as a scapegoate and Brits are eating it right up.

Why did the elderly get free tv licences in the first place? Because we have to pay fucking money to access television, even if you don't own a tv in some cases. Immigrants didn't cause that.

But you know what the worst thing is?

MY FAMILY ARE IMMIGRANTS. MY UNCLE IS AN IMMIGRANT. HE WAS NOT BORN IN THIS COUNTRY. but that's fine because he's not one of the ones the government blames shit on.

[basictrevelyan]

What is fucking me up is that what's happening here is not Tory voters seeing that righty politics is not working and going for righty lite politics (labour of "more police" fame) but being like. Well it's simply that the Tories are idiots and we need to go RIGHTER

And effectively reform have split the vote. So most people in this country still want to privatise the NHS and stop the boats and whatever the fuck they think will magically cause them to be able to get a GP appointment while costing them no money.

[bullet-proof-gay]

The link she mentions is here

go OFF queen

[unknownn-girl]

[lanaaareydel]

this is shit.

[notquiteaghost]

This expresses my feelings precisely.