plinth on Nostr: Here's a weird birthday request - but read to the end first. Let's talk about nut ...
Here's a weird birthday request - but read to the end first.
Let's talk about nut allergies. Somewhere between .5% and 1% of the population has a nut allergy. As a result, a lot of food establishments are very clear about what food may contain nuts. But what if that wasn't the case. What if instead, for example, schools (just to pick one) said "we won't do anything about nut allergies and if you have one, you have to deal. No going in the cafeteria. Should it matter? Epipens exist, so if the kids have an exposure then too bad, they just need their Epipen. OK - what if we said that Epipens, one of the key things that makes nut allergies non-lethal won't be available to kids under 18. What do you think will happen? I mean obviously, kids will die - but you know it's only .5% or so. One or two out of every two hundred. What if now people in power decide that it's not enough to keep them out of the cafeteria but we're going to out and out demonize anyone who has a nut allergy. Politicians will run on platforms where they spew hate about people with nut allergies and do everything they can to try to erase them from society. That would be pretty awful.
This is ridiculous, right? Totally. Except this is not about nut allergies. This is about people who are #trans. They represent roughly the same percentage of the general population as people with nut allergies. And everything I wrote is happening today: they are being denied access to bathrooms. They are being denied access to medication. They are being demonized by politicians who are running on platforms that include fomenting hate.
Let's go back in time to the 70's and 80's. Very similar things were happening to gays and lesbians. The rhetoric was the same. "What if my kid's teachers are gay? They shouldn't be around kids!" Teachers who were gay were being outed and fired because people were sure - totally sure - that they would groom their kids and MAKE THEM GAY. Or that they will ABUSE OUR KIDS. Sound familiar? It should. It's the same playbook.
If you think I'm wrong, I will offer you a challenge. Find me cases where someone has legitimately been arrested for grooming a kid to be trans or a trans person abusing a kid and for each one I will post 8 cases where priests/pastors/police officers/politicians have been arrested for actual sexual abuse of minors. This is, unfortunately, very easy on my side.
The playbook works. Why? Because parents are terrified that their kids will be, heaven forbid, different from other kids. They are terrified that their kids will be made pariahs so it's easy to convince them that it must be grooming or books. And in doing so, they're making it worse for all people who are trans.
"But Steve, trans doesn't exist! It's SIMPLE BIOLOGY! You get either two X chromosomes or an X and a Y! I learned that in high school." And you're right. You learned *simple* biology in high school. What you didn't get is that those XX and XY chromosomes aren't all the same and that there are pairs of genes in them that turn on/off all kinds of interesting things that affect you and your gender. For example, sometimes the genes in an XX pair turn on tetrachromacy, which allows the person *incredible* color vision. Some people say that gender is a spectrum and not a binary. I don't think this is quite right. Gender is a spectrum that is weighted heavily towards cis. This weighting makes it easier for people to assume that anything that isn't cis is somehow wrong.
"What about that thing in Virginia where they put buckets of kitty litter in classrooms for a student who identifies as a cat?" You fell for that bullshit story? The buckets of kitty litter are in classrooms for a very different reason: in case there is a school shooting and there is a lockdown and you have a room full of people all stuck in one place for *hours*. Let me say that again: the kitty litter story you heard is DISINFORMATION about gender identification. It's actually about school shootings and the NEED for that is a far worse indictment of society.
For the most part, you know what trans people would likely prefer to do? Live their lives as their best selves.
As of today, I have traveled around the sun 57 times. In that time I've worked with 4 people who are trans and hired 1 as a nanny. Do you want to know how it affected our work relationship? Not at all. Never came up except in one case where for an allyship program at work, I asked this person if I could ask them questions so that I could be a better ally. In the process, I found out just how challenging it was for them to go get actual treatment and now we're making it actively harder.
We are on a cusp here. I don't say this lightly. In May of 1933, the world's first clinic for trans people was broken into and occupied by Nazis and their entire library of research was burned. (ref: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/ ). How far are we from this? Schools throughout red states are removing books. How long until the book burning starts? How long until people are isolated in ghettos? How long until people have to register as queer? How long until concentration camps? Because right now, we're at the fomenting hatred stage and book banning stage. We're at the stage where it's apparently easy for people to buy up cases of Bud Light and shoot them with guns to show how much they hate that Bud Light did a promo with a trans streamer. Yes, I know that I'm making a slippery slope argument, but I will say simply that history doesn't repeat itself. It rhymes, though.
So here's my birthday request: if you are in a position of privilege (I know I am - white cis het man - in the words of npub1ept9x2ry29d2jymxtp5wt94fnetfz5h0688c0tamx2cc3vggvfesdmjcl3 (npub1ept…jcl3) I'm playing life at the lowest difficulty setting), use your privilege to speak up. Call people on their bullshit. If you're worried about confrontation, there are ways to do that non-confrontationally. For example, ask questions. Be a 4 year old and keep asking what might be obvious questions. How does that affect you? Where did you where this? Why is this an issue? Who told you that? Did they have an agenda? Wear them down and don't let them get away with it.
That's what I want for my birthday.
Let's talk about nut allergies. Somewhere between .5% and 1% of the population has a nut allergy. As a result, a lot of food establishments are very clear about what food may contain nuts. But what if that wasn't the case. What if instead, for example, schools (just to pick one) said "we won't do anything about nut allergies and if you have one, you have to deal. No going in the cafeteria. Should it matter? Epipens exist, so if the kids have an exposure then too bad, they just need their Epipen. OK - what if we said that Epipens, one of the key things that makes nut allergies non-lethal won't be available to kids under 18. What do you think will happen? I mean obviously, kids will die - but you know it's only .5% or so. One or two out of every two hundred. What if now people in power decide that it's not enough to keep them out of the cafeteria but we're going to out and out demonize anyone who has a nut allergy. Politicians will run on platforms where they spew hate about people with nut allergies and do everything they can to try to erase them from society. That would be pretty awful.
This is ridiculous, right? Totally. Except this is not about nut allergies. This is about people who are #trans. They represent roughly the same percentage of the general population as people with nut allergies. And everything I wrote is happening today: they are being denied access to bathrooms. They are being denied access to medication. They are being demonized by politicians who are running on platforms that include fomenting hate.
Let's go back in time to the 70's and 80's. Very similar things were happening to gays and lesbians. The rhetoric was the same. "What if my kid's teachers are gay? They shouldn't be around kids!" Teachers who were gay were being outed and fired because people were sure - totally sure - that they would groom their kids and MAKE THEM GAY. Or that they will ABUSE OUR KIDS. Sound familiar? It should. It's the same playbook.
If you think I'm wrong, I will offer you a challenge. Find me cases where someone has legitimately been arrested for grooming a kid to be trans or a trans person abusing a kid and for each one I will post 8 cases where priests/pastors/police officers/politicians have been arrested for actual sexual abuse of minors. This is, unfortunately, very easy on my side.
The playbook works. Why? Because parents are terrified that their kids will be, heaven forbid, different from other kids. They are terrified that their kids will be made pariahs so it's easy to convince them that it must be grooming or books. And in doing so, they're making it worse for all people who are trans.
"But Steve, trans doesn't exist! It's SIMPLE BIOLOGY! You get either two X chromosomes or an X and a Y! I learned that in high school." And you're right. You learned *simple* biology in high school. What you didn't get is that those XX and XY chromosomes aren't all the same and that there are pairs of genes in them that turn on/off all kinds of interesting things that affect you and your gender. For example, sometimes the genes in an XX pair turn on tetrachromacy, which allows the person *incredible* color vision. Some people say that gender is a spectrum and not a binary. I don't think this is quite right. Gender is a spectrum that is weighted heavily towards cis. This weighting makes it easier for people to assume that anything that isn't cis is somehow wrong.
"What about that thing in Virginia where they put buckets of kitty litter in classrooms for a student who identifies as a cat?" You fell for that bullshit story? The buckets of kitty litter are in classrooms for a very different reason: in case there is a school shooting and there is a lockdown and you have a room full of people all stuck in one place for *hours*. Let me say that again: the kitty litter story you heard is DISINFORMATION about gender identification. It's actually about school shootings and the NEED for that is a far worse indictment of society.
For the most part, you know what trans people would likely prefer to do? Live their lives as their best selves.
As of today, I have traveled around the sun 57 times. In that time I've worked with 4 people who are trans and hired 1 as a nanny. Do you want to know how it affected our work relationship? Not at all. Never came up except in one case where for an allyship program at work, I asked this person if I could ask them questions so that I could be a better ally. In the process, I found out just how challenging it was for them to go get actual treatment and now we're making it actively harder.
We are on a cusp here. I don't say this lightly. In May of 1933, the world's first clinic for trans people was broken into and occupied by Nazis and their entire library of research was burned. (ref: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/ ). How far are we from this? Schools throughout red states are removing books. How long until the book burning starts? How long until people are isolated in ghettos? How long until people have to register as queer? How long until concentration camps? Because right now, we're at the fomenting hatred stage and book banning stage. We're at the stage where it's apparently easy for people to buy up cases of Bud Light and shoot them with guns to show how much they hate that Bud Light did a promo with a trans streamer. Yes, I know that I'm making a slippery slope argument, but I will say simply that history doesn't repeat itself. It rhymes, though.
So here's my birthday request: if you are in a position of privilege (I know I am - white cis het man - in the words of npub1ept9x2ry29d2jymxtp5wt94fnetfz5h0688c0tamx2cc3vggvfesdmjcl3 (npub1ept…jcl3) I'm playing life at the lowest difficulty setting), use your privilege to speak up. Call people on their bullshit. If you're worried about confrontation, there are ways to do that non-confrontationally. For example, ask questions. Be a 4 year old and keep asking what might be obvious questions. How does that affect you? Where did you where this? Why is this an issue? Who told you that? Did they have an agenda? Wear them down and don't let them get away with it.
That's what I want for my birthday.