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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.

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Did you know

If you perform action Harmlessly Bother Cat you can receive Sounds

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Spike's Jewelry in Season 6

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YOU don’t have to be perfect to be loved. but I do

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This is more than Spock and Kirk, "going canon."

It is two characters who were irrevocably influential to science fiction, to fandom, to media at large, getting a beautiful and poetic ending.

This is layered in Star Trek canon, but more than that it is Kirk and Spock reuniting.

Against all the odds in the universe, ours and theirs.

Kirk was dead. Spock was dead in ANOTHER DIMENSION. They died alone and without each other. This was their unbelievably tragic and canon ending UNTIL TODAY.

Now their ending is this.

Reunification, connection, crossing time, space, and reality itself to be together again. Because that is how important they are to one another. Because that is how important they are to Star Trek itself. Because that is how important James Tiberius Kirk and S'chn T'gai Spock are to media at large, Star Trek fans and beyond.

This is monumental to a degree that I truly do not know if people can understand and I will NEVER get over it.

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reddit is having a glitch where it puts the wrong captions over photos and it’s the only thing i care about right now

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really recommend getting a partner with a different religion than you and very little knowledge of your religion because the opportunities for explaining things to each other are just exquisite

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tank redacted and daisy tonner would be best friends i think

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I don’t think it’s right for you to be asexual and married. It just doesn’t seem fair to your husband. He didn’t sign up to be in a sexless marriage? How do you make sure his needs are still met?

i trapped him in a jar like he’s a little bug and i throw some non-sexual intimacy in every once and a while so he has enrichment in his enclosure

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the name "theresa" is so funny like. theres a what

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Cracking one of these bad bois open & sharing with my mutuals

'Tis the season

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My douchey coworker started a story by being like, “You know Mr. Beast?”

And honest to god, I don’t, but I suspect if this coworker likes him then I wouldn’t care for him. I had the unparalleled pleasure of going, “The moldy cheese guy?”

That was the only thing I knew associated with the name.

Fully derailed him. He was absolutely baffled and stopped to google the moldy cheese scandal. So thank you tumblr, for sharing about the moldy cheese so I didn’t have to listen to that anecdote.

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I feel like even if White No Face successfully made Xie Lian a Calamity he'd still ultimately be unhappy because Wu Ming would just... Be there. Being unendingly devoted to Xie Lian in a way Xie Lian would never truly be to White No Face, because White No Face had to craft Xie Lian into the shape he wanted him to be and there's still bits that don't quite fit exactly.... Meanwhile Wu Ming just imprinted on Xie Lian like a duckling and is now ride or die forever. It would make White No Face furious.

White No Face, walking up to Xie Lian disassociating while Wu Ming hugs him: Why are you letting that weird little ghost hang off you?

Xie Lian: *snaps back to reality* Wu Ming can do what he wants.

Wu Ming: I want to hug Your Highness.

Xie Lian: *pats Wu Ming's head* See? It's fine.

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Pros of re-reading your own fic

a good time;

Has exactly the tropes you like and the characterization you want to read;

Gratification: yes you did finish a thing and yes you did do good;

just a very fun time all around.

Cons of re-reading your own fic:

Is that another TYpO

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Let bi boys date girls

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i found a baby picture of my cat please please look at him i'm begging you