#re: transgender cowardice

[homophyte]

sorry i cant stop thinking about it. i genuinely hate that the response lately to ppls worries about hrt--not talking about 'eveyone needs extensive therapy first' or 'you need to be [some unreasoble entry barrier %] certain cause itll change u forever' or othersuch scaremongering but people literally going 'im worried im gonna lose my job/housing/close relationships that are important to me'--is like. 'well too bad. couldnt be me. i would simply not worry about those things. skill issue. why would anything stop u from going on hrt. if literally anything might make you slightly hesitate or god forbid dissuade you this is a sign youre actually The Enemy.' what is fucking with that

[firespirited]

problematiques

I did a deep dive on the problems with Natalie Wynn of contrapoints last night and it boils down to this: she’s a binary trans woman who dreams of passing seamlessly and fading into womanhood. Yes that’s a privilege not everyone gets but it’s also not uncommon.

If you have the chance to pass, wanting to leave advocacy and the struggle and even the community that once carried you behind is something I’ve seen in queer, disability, neurodivergence, fat acceptance and racial spheres. I know people pretending to be european, straight, a higher class, a different backstory, who hide their meds, hide their faith or lack thereof, have no photos of their twenties, have business trips or trips to family that are actually downtime to recuperate or not perform...

I don’t think wishing for this or even one day leaving it all behind makes Natalie a BAD person however I’ve already been through the loss of friends because I’m odd, fat and disabled or simply because I “belonged to the before!times” even if I swore I’d never out them. The friend grief cycle on life’s washing machine leaves you a little shrunken but you get perspective for the next one: mostly that it’s not about you or about your other friends’ broken hearts: people have to do what they can to live a life that doesn’t break their mental health. It might feel selfish, dishonest, even callous but sometimes you can be a *good* friend and also part of someones emotional baggage they’re trying to escape.

It’s a clear sign of burnout that she’s musing about it in public. It downgrades her from one of THE voices to A voice, known trans woman youtuber, not the best advocate for the trans community, more of a transgender 101 course for those who still choke on the concept of crossing the binary. You don’t owe her your views or support, she doesn’t owe you accountability because she’s not the sole purveyor of trans activism, she’s a youtube entertainer and she doesn’t claim to speak for the trans umbrella community at large. If you enjoy dissecting her tweets and videos for internalised fear of gender non conformity that’s fine so long as it’s not hurting you but...

We could also just not watch.

Here are a bunch of various youtubers to support and enjoy instead:

Advocacy + media critique or educational videos: Kat Blaque, Jessie Gender, Sophie from Mars (formerly Curio), Philosophy tube, Transgirl Therapist, Verilybitchie, Anansi’s library

Media critique: Sarah Zedig, CJtheX, Adequate Emily, Ro Ramdin

Cartoons: CellSpex

I’m afraid I don’t have many reccs for cartoons, anime, diy, fashion, makeup, trends, music reviews or comedy as I’m not tuned into that side of youtube. Please feel to add.

Disclaimer: I’m cis + white. I’m keeping a lot of people’s secrets. If you’d like to tell me I’m “talking over trans people” and “asking you to forgive”, please re-read the above slowly or block me and forget I exist. Dog knows passing friends have done the same... Ba-dum tish! Do not reblog to dogpile, this isn’t high school. I’m just one person on their own blog explaining how passing is a dream *some* aspire to at the cost of their advocacy and friends. If you think some intersections are so different we can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to be in eachothers shoes well, I’m not wearing shoes, I’m currently having trouble walking and putting on shoes. Oh and if you’re reading and we used to be friends: hope you’re having a nice life but also hope you get pangs of loneliness and cowardice and miss me sometimes.

To clarify: you lose your good activist badge if you’re not inclusive, you get marked as harmful if you deliberately and repeatedly throw other identities under the bus and you lose your viewers and cred. Anything else is harrassment and mob justice. I guarantee that your fave activist who decides to sell out will lose a lot of friends in painful fights and get a hollow half acceptance in exchange. No celeb, however small, needs your personal message: anger will just be taken as blind hate and a heartfelt plea won’t change their mind. You drown them out by boosting other voices. It seems unfair but the algorithms love and reward any engagement. So ignoring and engaging with someone else is punishment enough.

[lostanarchymagazine]

Hanna-Barbera Beyond is a comic book initiative started in 2016 by DC Comics that consists in a line of comic books based on various characters from the animation studio Hanna-Barbera.

Wacky Raceland is a comic book series that re-imagines the cast of Wacky Races competing in a desert wasteland, reminiscent of the Mad Max film series, filled with all kinds of obstacles, towards one single goal, Utopia, mankind's last safe haven. It is also one of four comic books introduced by DC Comics in 2016 as part of the comic book initiative Hanna-Barbera Beyond, among with Scooby Apocalypse, Future Quest and The Flintstones.

The world has ended, but the race has just begun! Penelope Pitstop, Peter Perfect and the rest of the Wacky Racers vie for the finish line in a contest where the winner takes all and second place is death. Today’s trial: the shattered maze of freeways known as the Überpass, where they’re beset by giant sand beasts, mutated insects, and worst of all, Dick Dastardly’s murderously poor sportsmanship. The last thing they need after surviving the race is a brutal bar fight in a local dive, but that’s just what they get!!

Characters

Dick Dastardly and Muttley – Drivers of the Mean Machine, Dick Dastardly and Muttley are known by the other racers for being the biggest cheaters there are, not to mention the biggest bastards there are. Before the apocalypse, Dastardly was a world-renowned pianist called Richard D'Astardlien, who lost his wife and son due to his cowardice during a nanite attack. As for Muttley, he is a mutated and robotically-enhanced dog whose intelligence and aggressiveness were slightly enhanced thanks to his exposure to the "SC-00-B2" serum, created in the Butcher Shop as one of the many projects overseen by Professor Pat Pending.

Penelope Pitstop – Driver of the Compact Pussycat, Penelope Pitstop is a tough, no-nonsense young girl who takes no orders from anyone and sees herself as a strong and independent woman in a world where the strongest prevail. She has a close bond with her car, stating that they are full-time partners in the race, looking out for one another. Before the apocalypse, Penelope lived in the Greek island of Aegina, with her mother and her sister, who were killed by a tsunami that destroyed the island.

Peter Perfect – Driver of the Turbo Terrific, Peter Perfect is seen by the other racers as Earth's last Boy Scout, mostly because of the way he acts, upholding the rules of chivalry. Unlike most of his fellow racers, Peter believes that even though the world has ended, it does not mean one should act and behave like a savage. A natural driver, he is also a bit of a scaredy-cat, trying to make a good impression in front of Penelope, whom he has a soft spot for.

Professor Patrick "Pat" Pending – Driver of the Convert-a-Car, Professor Pat Pending is an erudite and slightly insane scientist who, in the past, was head of the projects and scientific experiments conducted in a private research facility called "the Butcher Shop". Among those experiments were some of the individuals that would later join the Wacky Race, as well as creations that caused the end of the world. With an insane yet brilliant mind at his disposal, he makes his job keeping the racers alive; for secretly, he needs them to accomplish a goal that he set for himself a long time ago. It is revealed that he subliminally programmed the Announcer to create the Race (and the racers) so that he would have an army to destroy her.

The Ant Hill Mob – Drivers of the Bulletproof Bomb, the Ant Hill Mob are a group of gangster-like albino midgets with a hive-mind mentality composed of seven members, named I to VII, having V (pronounced Vee) as their leader. Although sharing a hive-mind, the seven members of the Ant Hill Mob can think and act for themselves separately. They were part of an experiment conducted by Professor Pat Pending in the Butcher Shop, which manufactured them in a cloning facility in order to be used as cheap manpower for the military.

Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear – Drivers of the Arkansas Chug-a-bug, Lazy Luke and Blubber Bear are a duo of hunters who lived up north. Having been friends ever since they were kids, they have always looked out for each other. Luke is an alcoholic who drinks in order to forget the horrors he sees (he carries around a map with the locations of all the bars in the Wasteland), while Blubber is half-human, half-bear as a result of the Announcer's surgery to piece him back together after a grizzly bear attacked the two friends, nearly killing him.

The Red Baron – Driver of the Crimson Haybailer, Red is a narcissistic, homophobic sociopath with Nazi tendencies, always referring to his motherland and how Adolf Hitler was right about eradicating certain kinds of people off the face of the planet, while stating that he himself is the living proof of Germany's Master Race. Before he joined the Race, Red was a professional gambler, having ripped off some of the most powerful men and women in Las Vegas. He was also in love with the daughter of Las Vegas' most powerful man, the Colonel, who accidentally killed his daughter when she placed herself in front of a bullet meant for Red. He has a particular hatred for Sergeant Blast.

Rufus Ruffcut and Sawtooth – Drivers of the Buzz Wagon, Rufus is a gay lumberjack who believes in the old saying that "bigger is better". As for Sawtooth, he is a small androgynous street urchin who fancies all kinds of knives, whom Rufus adopted as his protégé.

Sergeant Blast and Private Meekly – Drivers of the Army Surplus Special, Sergeant Blast and Private Meekly are an unstoppable duo, familiarized with all sorts of military tactics and an amazing arsenal at their disposal. Sergeant Blast is a transgender woman and spends her time reminding the others that although she is transgender, that makes her no less worthy than anyone else. As for Private Meekly, he is a weapon enthusiast, who sticks around Sergeant Blast not because he fears her, but because he respects her.

The Gruesome Twosome – Drivers of the Creepy Coupe, the Gruesome Twosome are a duo of freaks who resemble monsters, with Little Gruesome resembling a green-skinned vampire and Big Gruesome resembling a Frankenstein monster-type gladiator. Not much is known about them, except for the fact that Little Gruesome is able to control a swarm of bats that do his bidding, while Big Gruesome has incredible strength.

The Slag Brothers – Drivers of the Boulder Mobile, the Slag Brothers are a couple of Neanderthals who were brought back to life through the experiments conducted by Professor Pat Pending in the Butcher Shop before escaping it. Although they were frozen in ice for thousands of years, both Rock and Gravel Slag are able to understand English and speak it through the use of caveman expressions, thanks to a series of brain surgeries conducted by Pat Pending. Having lived off the land in the past, the two men are incredible scavengers and hunters.

The Announcer – The mysterious host of the Wacky Race. The Announcer turns out to be Professor Pat Pending's wife, Angelique Pending, who lost her body in an accident during the Slag Brothers' rampage through the Butcher Shop. In order to save her, Pat Pending removed her brain and placed it in a special container, which allowed her to live. Unfortunately, the lack of a physical body resulted in her going insane, unleashing an apocalyptic event on Earth which turned it into a wasteland.

[depressionresource]

On “It Gets Better”

(TW: excessive swearing, angry tone, suicide, self harm, sexual assault, emotional abuse, queer issues, medical stuff)

When people say "it gets better," it sounds empty. They don't know you--right? They don't understand the depths of what you're going through. You're different, broken. You're never going to be better. Fuck them for even saying that.

I've been there too.

Let me just give you a quick rundown of my life for the last ten years, just so you know that I really do understand how much your life sucks.

Here's what's on my mental illness resume:

I've survived three suicide attempts; a full entire decade of wanting to die every single second. Of blowing out birthday candles and wishing for the end of it all, every year. Thinking that everyone felt like this and I was just too weak to deal. Turns out it was depression, anxiety, panic attacks, a phobia, PTSD, and a dissociative disorder-- not normal shit. I went through six therapists, four of which were complete assholes, and two doctors trying to find medication that works (one of which was also a fucking asshole). Did stuff like excusing myself from classes and club meetings to silently sob in the bathroom for ten minutes and then come back like nothing happened. Hundreds of cuts and the resulting scars. Hating myself and everyone around me. Missing seven classes a week because I couldn't get out of bed. Eating too much, eating too little. Taking a break from college and thinking I wasn't strong enough to make anything of myself. Four years of sexual abuse, sexual assault, rape. Emotional abuse. Threats of violence. A brief stint of homelessness. Break ups that left me reeling. Coming out as bi, coming out as transgender, and getting some heavy queerphobia in return.

I thought nothing but cowardice was holding me back from suicide. I believed wholeheartedly it was never going to get better.

Spoiler alert: it did.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here's how getting better works. This is the part nobody tells you.

1. There are people that are going to help you. The vast majority of people are assholes, if not actively malicious, but there are a few gems out there that will genuinely try their best to get you to better places. They are out there and you will find them. They can be doctors, they can be therapists, they can be friends and lovers. They will teach you lessons by accident and on purpose. Be the best person you can be for them, because they're worth it. Even if they move out of your life, what they did for you lives on in your refusal to give up on yourself.

2. There are methods that you've never even heard about that professionals can use to improve your life. You might avoid therapy thinking "What is more whining going to do for me?" Instead, think of therapy as one-on-one tutoring. Have you ever heard of dialectical behavioral therapy? Probably not, but it can change your life like it has mine: step by step.

Sure, therapists need to get to know you and your life and your situation (which does involve plenty of "whining") but then they help you figure out how to deal. Together you can work on solutions that work for you. Some of them will be weird and silly, but they will work because you have discovered them yourself. You are unique, what you've been through is unique, and therefore you need your own unique game plan.

3. Someday, you will be in control of your life. (I'm assuming you're a teenager now, since most of Tumblr is.) Forget what everybody has said about high school being the best years of your life. High school is a living hell. You're an adult (pretty much) and yet you have no fucking control over your life. When the school district or your parents say jump, you say how high. It sucks.

Just wait until you're like twenty or twenty five before you decide that life isn't worth living, okay? By then you could be in Taiwan. Or Cuba. Or Burning Man. Or just a plain-ass apartment with people who love and understand you. You can spend your money on what you think is important. You can make your own schedule. You can eat whatever you want. (You can have booty calls over whenever you want.) You can cut off toxic people entirely-- including family. Of course, once you're out there you'll find that you actually want to do the responsible thing for you, but YOU get to decide what that looks like.

4. Getting better is hard fucking work. It's trying fifteen different medications and then taking five pills every day with breakfast. It's going to therapy and talking about the last things in the world that you want to talk about. It's doing the exact opposite of what you desperately want to do. It's about hearing and acknowledging the hard truths about what you've done to others and owning up to it.

And it never ends. You choose and re-choose recovery every single day when you get out of bed. You're never going to be perfect, but you're going to strive every day to be better than the day you were before.

This is not about "bootstraps" nor is it about "tough love." Both those concepts are harmful and ridiculous. That doesn't mean, however, that you're off the hook. Just like an athlete, you have to be constantly moving your way to a better place if you're going to get anywhere.

5. You're never going to be cured. Some part of you will always be sad and sick. You will always be fighting. It gets a hell of a lot easier with time and with practice, but the shadow will never leave. Sometimes, you will fuck up and relapse, and you need to accept that. You will have bad days.

This doesn't mean that you can't have an amazing, meaningful life. It just means you're going to end up ten times stronger than the people who kept you down and fucked you up.

Right now, I have found some medications that keep my brain in some sort of order. I'm in therapy and I do a shit ton of work on my own. I have had three or four people in my life who have encouraged me and taught me how to do better and how to love myself more. Recovery is the entire focus of my life, but I'm getting somewhere. And the more I work on it, the better I feel and the faster I get where I'm going.

6. None of this is fucking fair. You're going to have to work ten times harder to get through life than other people with more agreeable brains. You did nothing to deserve this suffering, but it's up to you to fix it.

Get angry about all the needless, meaningless bullshit you've been through, tap into that spite, and let it help you grow and keep growing.

Decide today, and every single day from now on, that you're worth it.

[booksnwaffles]

“Boy, Snow, Bird” by Helen Oyeyemi

 “When I say I don’t always show up in mirrors, that is exactly what I mean, i.e., it is a statement of fact.”

RATINGS: 🧇🧇🧇🧇/5

SYNOPSIS:

BOY Novak turns twenty and decides to try for a brand-new life. Flax Hill, Massachusetts, isn’t exactly a welcoming town, but it does have the virtue of being the last stop on the bus route she took from New York. Flax Hill is also the hometown of Arturo Whitman –- craftsman, widower, and father of Snow. SNOW is mild-mannered, radiant and deeply cherished –- exactly the sort of little girl Boy never was, and Boy is utterly beguiled by her. If Snow displays a certain inscrutability at times, that’s simply a characteristic she shares with her father, harmless until Boy gives birth to Snow’s sister, Bird. When BIRD is born Boy is forced to re-evaluate the image Arturo’s family have presented to her, and Boy, Snow and Bird are broken apart. Sparkling with wit and vibrancy, Boy, Snow, Bird is a deeply moving novel about three women and the strange connection between them. It confirms Helen Oyeyemi’s place as one of the most original and dynamic literary voices of her generation.

REVIEW: 

This book is quite unique. I bought without expecting anything in particular, and I was swooped away. I love Helen Oyeyemi’s prose so much that immediately after I finished reading this book I ordered another one (White is for Witching). There is something truly unique about her story. Her characters are truly amazing, because they are  so real, and then she puts in there something magical rooted in reality.  Is it real, is it the product of the character’s imagination ? In the end it doesn’t really matter, because it serves a purpose. Real or imagination it gives more informations on the characters and their psyche, and how people view them.  These three women that she wrote about are complex, and Bird is the most amazing character of this book. I just love that kid. Their lives, the kind of people they are, how brave, how much cowardice they can show, why, who they will become... Everything was absolutely amazing. I loved it ! I read the first page, and then I couldn’t stop myself.  Even Boy was a compelling voice, even though certain things she did were quite cruel, she was really trying to be a good mum and protect her daughter.  Overall I think it’s really interesting take on the Snow White fairy tale. My only problem with it was the last part, and the transgender thing going down. First I think it was too much, in the sense that I don’t understand how it fixed things or explained them, and then it wasn’t really positive and personally I just think it was a little bit gauche. I don’t know if it’s me who didn’t get it or if the issue is with the book, but in my opinion it could have ended better. Plus the whole Rat-catcher plot comes maybe too late, and then we have this whole backstory about him and the books ends like that...  Appart from this, I would really recommend this book, the three main characters are beautifully written whether it’s in their flaws, or their strength. It feels incredibly real for a book based loosely on a fairytale. Plus the little touch of magic in this realistic world, is the kind of “odd” factor that I enjoy. It’s unusual but it works, and that’s when the magic happens for me. 

[somepersonalqueerrunes]

A lecture noone wants

So... Recently, I’ve been having a lot on my mind. Approximately 4 things at once. I thought it might be helpful to write it down, sort through it. And considering how quickly these thoughts are racing, it seems far too slow to write it down with ancient runes in a tucked away notebook like I normally do. While reading through “Symptoms of being human” by Jeff Garvin (For the second time, might I add), I though “Hey, why not write them down as runes and then share it on the internet!” (Thus, the name Some Personal Queer Runes, Rune for short). Original as it may be, it seemed too convoluted, and I can’t find any good rune font that would work on most screens. No more runes, bar those of the Latin alphabet (Hey, the name of the blog also spells out SPQR, what a happy coincidence!). Anyway, I ought to fix up the appearance of this blog eventually, but today, I think I’ll stick to two things. Tell you a bit about myself and tell you two nice things that happened today. [End of rant] (Was it a rant? Was it just me feeling I need to explain my every move? Probably both.) A Christmas, a couple of years ago, I was reading a book (”Magnus Chase: The hammer of Thor” by Rick Riordan). There, a particular aspect of a character resonated with me, and I realized I am gender fluid. Now this is the part that annoys me, I live in Norway, and most of the people I’ve met here, is very openminded to sexuality and gender identity. Heck, I was given that as a topic for a minor exam I had to do a few years back. Regardless, no matter how open-minded people are, few know of all possible gender identities (Who does?). It just seems that whenever I say “I’m gender fluid” I also need to give a lecture explaining what it is. Nobody wants a lecture. I don’t because I feel anxious enough about telling them I’m gender fluid, and whoever I’m lecturing is victim to a huge information dump that if successful, would permanently change how they perceive me. I don’t even feel qualified to hold a lecture on the topic. I’ve had the most success using a series of animated gifs. I’ve already managed to mention two books that explain it, but they are both different in their explanations, and (naturally) neither of them explain exactly how it is in my specific case. However, my explanation will borrow a few elements from “Symptoms of being human”. Now, let’s end this rambling (honestly, I should rename this blog to “Some Personal Queer Rambling”) and start “The lecture” [Cue sarcastic yay] Most people perceive gender as binary (meaning only having two possible states). For these people, it is as if in the womb, there is a switch, and it is either set to male or female, and is then stuck in that position from then on, to death and beyond. In LGBTQ terms, these are referred to as Cis (Pronounced sis as in sister). Some feel that their gender does not match the sex they were assigned at birth. Plenty here transition then from what they were assigned at birth to the “opposite” sex. These people form the T in the LGBTQ alphabet soup, in other words, transsexual or transgender. Some people perceive gender as a spectrum (imagine the colour spectrum, the whole rainbow) where what normally called boy and girl, or man and woman, are merely two shades amongst an indefinably large sea of colours. A term popular here is Non-binary, and there are plenty of gender identities in here. If you’re still following this line of logic, I first of all want to congratulate you on being a patient and intelligent human (or other species) being, thank you for still reading. Then we come to the more fluid view. To gender fluid people, their gender identity is a bit more fluctuating. The gender they identify with changes over time. For some it changes over years. For some it can fluctuate many times in an evening. I have myself experienced identifying with one gender for a whole week, then fluctuate several times in a single day. This is the gist of being gender fluid, gender is not a solid state, like a rock, it’s a fluid, like water. (Come to think of it, the sound of gender freezing and/or evaporating feels strangely appropriate.) The genders gender fluids fluctuate between changes from person to person. Alex Fierro from Riordan’s works is described to essentially toggle between male and female at random. Meanwhile, Riley from Garvin’s book describes it as a compass that instead of north and south has masculine and feminine. The compass is always changing without Riley’s control. It’s not a switch it’s a dial, constantly changing. I bet this all sounds confusing. I’m frequently confused myself. How is my gender fluid experience? I feel like it’s a map, or a co-ordinate system. I’m not certain which. Instead of north and south, it has masculine and not masculine. Instead of east and west, it has feminine and not feminine. Both ranging from 0% to 100%. Sometimes I feel masculine, sometimes feminine, sometimes between, neutral, sometimes I feel both. Most of the time, I feel like one of the aforementioned states, but leaning in a direction, like neutral leaning towards masculine, or female leaning towards neutral. I need to keep track of where I am on this weird gender map, I’m stilling figuring out how to read it, I only really started looking at it this spring. If you understood that, wonderful! If you did not, welcome to the “Confused by gender club”! [Cue small background yay and confetti] For reasons I’m not going to go into here, I somewhat stopped exploring my identity shortly after the burst of realization I was gender fluid, and really only picked it up again this spring. Because this fall I began at a “Folkehøgskole” (Essentially, a one-year school focused more on learning than getting through the curriculum, and students are viewed at equals to the teachers, and primarily, one subject is focused on through the year) and I wanted to be comfortable enough with myself to introduce myself at the start of the year as gender fluid, and be free to fluctuate as much as I needed throughout my stay here. Long story short, I didn’t reach that goal, albeit I did make some great strides. Now I’m sitting here, in my dorm-room that I’m supposed to share with someone that I share gender with, but it doesn’t always match. If I want to go to the toilet or shower, I have no other option, but the rooms labelled with male or female, which I particularly have avoided these last couple of years due to not wanting to enter the “wrong” restroom. I’m nearly constantly surrounded by other people I have not told of my gender identity. There is hardly any time I have enough privacy to wear clothes that do not match what I was assigned at birth, without being seen. Thus far, my gender has “fortunately” been mostly “frozen” (yes, I’m now using that term to explain my gender) as what I was assigned at birth, but the fear and confusion as to what to do when that stopped was suffocating. Then, these last couple of days, it has been fluctuating like crazy, bouncing all over my little gender map. Regardless, right now, I wanted to tell you the two good things that happened today. First of all, our first assignment was to create a small video or something similar, that explained who we were. We were allowed to be as artistic, liberal and deceitful in our project as we wanted. Knowing the video would likely only be showed once, and probably not reviewed frame by frame, my theme became to show some very personal information in the video, but so quickly and drowned out by other information no one would have a chance to catch and process more than a hint of what was going on in it. Today we showed our projects to each other, and a guy in my class noticed that “Symptoms of being human” was briefly featured in it and asked me afterwards if he could later borrow the “white book with the Hitler haircut on the cover”. He still wanted to read it despite me explaining that it had nothing to do with WWII or anything else he would expect. That makes me hopeful. I brought the book with me here to more easily explain a part of myself, and it seems that might happen. It’s far easier to say “I have this in common with this character from this book” than it is to say “I’m this, you probably don’t know what that means, let me give you a lecture. He shall have it once I’m done re-reading it. Assuming he promises to return it to me unharmed. It isn’t a book sold in Norway. The second thing was small and simple. While playing a card-game arranged by the school (Werewolf, similar to mafia or town of Salem), someone was referred to as her, and they quickly corrected “I prefer “hen”” (Hen is a gender neutral pronoun used in Sweden, since Norwegian has no gender neutral pronoun in the dictionary, many uses this one from Swedish, as we otherwise use the same pronouns) and everyone was ok with it. It shouldn’t surprise me as “Discrimination based on gender identity” is illegal in the rules of the school, but I have nevertheless been terrified about telling anyone about that part of myself regardless. I wanted to applaud them and give them a pat on the back for doing something so simple, yet important that I was too cowardly to do. Of course, my cowardice prevented me from doing that too. These are such small simple things, but they mean the world to me, they give me hope. Although I didn’t make my last goal, I’m not giving up on it. My new goal is to be comfortable enough with my identity to reveal during this year that I am gender fluid. Sooner better than later. And I guess this will be my (b)log documenting it. -Rune

[friend-clarity]

Indiana Teacher: I Was Forced To Resign Because I Won’t Pretend Boys Can Be Girls

Joy Pullmann, June 14, 2018

An Indiana orchestra teacher says public school administrators gave him three options at the end of this school year: refer to students as the opposite sex, resign, or be fired. He decided to resign at the end of the school year because the school would not budge, but at a local school board meeting Monday pleaded to have his job back. The board voted instead to accept his resignation.

Local public officials have so far refused to publicly discuss the policies they put into place at the beginning of 2018 that John Kluge says led to his resignation in May. Brownsburg Community School Corporation, the district that employed Kluge, put out a transgender policy document in January instructing staff to call students by their chosen names and pronouns once they are so designated on school records. Kluge opted instead to address students by their last names to avoid either referring to his apparently several transgender students with pronouns and names of the opposite sex, or offending them by not doing as they wished despite its contradiction of reality.

That wasn’t good enough. At the school board meeting, students accused Kluge of saying that transgender persons “are not an actual human being” and “actively disrespect[ing]” them for not using opposite-sex pronouns to describe them.

“Mr. Kluge’s religious beliefs have absolutely no place in a public high school. I think what he believes is morally just conflicts with what not only I believe, [but] what my parents believe, what my psychiatrist, therapist and doctor believe and the school board believe are morally just,” said student Aidyn Sucec. Kluge’s beliefs are not merely moral, but also scientific. Scientifically, there are only two sexes. “Gender” is a linguistic term for a non-physical concept.

Parents Flood Board Meeting: ‘Why Weren’t We Notified?’

The school district’s policy document says students may change their sex designation and name on school records with parental permission and “a letter from a health care professional.” It also says teachers and staff who refer to such children with the pronouns and name that correspond to their biological sex will be liable for unspecified professional consequences if the teacher did so on purpose or  more than once.

“lt is the employee’s professional responsibility to follow the expectations and guidelines” of the school district, the document says several times. ” lt is our expectation that teachers use the pronoun associated with the gender as it appears in PowerSchool. lf they/them is requested, we expect that pronoun to be used as well,”  the document says.”

More than 200 parents flooded the local school board meeting Monday at which Kluge was allowed the usual two minutes to plead his case. “Many of the parents at Monday night’s meeting said they were unaware that this accommodation was in place for transgender students and are uncomfortable with its implications for their children,” reported the Indianapolis Star. “Landon Chapman said he’s not comfortable with students who were born male being able to use the same female restroom as his daughter. ‘Why is it that parents weren’t notified?’ he asked the board.”

During the two-hour public comment period, school board members merely thanked people for their comments and refused to talk about the district’s pro-transgender policies, which include allowing students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex. The district’s policy document says their policies are a direct result of court decisions and federal regulations.

Yet courts have so far handed down mixed decisions on transgender students and the Trump administration rescinded the Obama administration’s push for transgender preferences in public schools. Most courts forcing transgender policies on schools are reinterpreting the word “sex” inside the federal Title IX law to mean “self-description of gender” instead, despite the lack of precedent or sense for doing so.

Republican-Run Legislature Refuses to Protect Kids

In February, Indiana’s Republican-controlled House gutted a bill that would have required schools to get parents’ informed consent to teach children LGBT ideology such as sexual orientation and gender identity. The controlling committee also deleted a requirement that parents be allowed access to all sex-related instructional materials that might be used with their children. So, thanks to this act of legislative cowardice, as Margot Cleveland wrote here at the time:

[Indiana public] Schools may teach children as young as age five that a boy can become a girl or a girl can become a boy. Teachers may tell students that they must refer to a transgender student as belonging to a false sex and using incorrect pronouns. In other words, it allows exactly what transpired in a California kindergarten in August.

Republican leadership told constituents they didn’t protect kids by passing the bill because there was no reason to. They said it was utterly ridiculous to think schools in red-state Indiana might use taxpayer dollars, facilities, employees, and other resources to indoctrinate kids with LGBT gender politics.

Yet the Brownsburg policy says its schools will allow boys to compete in girls’ athletic and music events, and vice versa. It says boys will be allowed into girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms, and vice versa. It says the school will facilitate cross-dressing for gender dysphoric students wearing uniforms for athletic, musical, and other activities. These actions teach children just as fully and boldly as a direct statement of them in sex ed class would. By allowing this behavior, the school endorses it.

Brownsburg’s policy also requires and communicates highly ideological and scientifically false ideas about human sexuality, such as this: “What does transfluid mean? This gender identity is described as a mix between male and female. People who are transfluid report feeling more male at times and at other times more female.”

The document also suggests parents be kept in the dark about whether their children will be exposed to transgenderism merely by attending public school: “By federal law, the School is prohibited from disclosing any student’s personal information with members of the public. This includes answering questions about whether a transgender students is enrolled in the School or at a specific building.”

Too bad if you wanted to preserve your child’s innocence and sense of stability as long as possible. Other people get to determine your child’s exposure to highly complex, personal, and troubling psychosexual behavior. And they don’t care about the possible social contagion effects, either, even though that means a dramatic increase in mental health problems and even plastic surgery for children. In fact, they might want those kind of effects. Lifelong medical dependency is extremely profitable, after all.

Here’s What Else Is In that Policy Document

Here are some other selected quotes from the Brownsburg schools’ policy document about transgenderism. It says that working for public schools requires, as a condition of employment, that people do things that contradict basic biological reality plus core teachings of the majority of the world’s religious adherents. Yes, it really is saying that people who are employed by taxpayers must give up their First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech.

It says students who are uncomfortable with lying about another child’s sex are bullies. It says teachers will not be notified that a transgender student will be in their classroom if the child enters the year after going transgender.

Elsewhere, the policy repeatedly refers people with questions to the school counselor, presumably for politically correct re-education. It’s not clear whether minor students who make such visits would be accompanied by their parents, or their parents even notified, if the visit happens during school hours. One can easily presume that the demand for school counselors will go way up. Good job security, if you can get it.

How do teachers break from their personal biases and beliefs so that we can best serve our students? We know this is a difficult topic for some staff members, however, when you work in a public school, you sign up to follow the law and the policies/practices of that organization and that might mean following practices that are different than your beliefs.

How do we address other students who are uncomfortable, who laugh, who call names, etc.? (5) This is bullying and should be dealt with in the manner we deal with other bullying situations.

How do we deal with a student exploding in anger with being called the wrong name or gender? lf it’s the fifth time this week the staff member has messed up the pronoun, then the staff member needs to get on board. However, if the student explodes on one small mistake, we would address the student behavior as we normally would.

What is the policy on informing teachers about the students who are identified as transgender? ln the year the change takes place, once we have parent permission, we then notify the teachers. Once the change in PowerSchool, etc. has taken place, there would no further notification of future teachers unless requested by the student and/or parents.

Below is a clip from a local TV station interviewing Kluge about his resignation.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist and author of "The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," out from Encounter Books in 2017. Get it on Amazon.