A terrifying New York Times article today announced that the Trump administration is considering “narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth,” a measure that would essentially eliminate any and all recognition of transgender and nonbinary people and, therefore, their civil rights.
The memo from the Department of Health and Human Services claims officials need a clearer definition of gender. Their proposed definition “would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.”
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the department proposed in the memo, which was drafted and has been circulating since last spring. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
The new definition would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves — surgically or otherwise — as a gender other than the one they were born into.
“This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in the Obama administration and helped write transgender guidance that is being undone.
Let me be perfectly clear: Being transgender is not something you can believe or not believe in, support or not support. It’s a reality. Trans people exist. Always have, always will. What this will do is make it infinitely *more* difficult than it already is to be trans in America. Violence, poverty, inaccessible healthcare, and a slew of other already-persistent problems will worsen. New generations of trans kids will be silenced in ways that date back decades, if not longer.
We cannot under any circumstances allow this to happen. Vote. Protest. Cis folks, donate to trans-led organizations and trans individuals’ GoFundMe pages for medical care. Talk to your transphobic (or trans-ignorant) friends and family about what a policy like this would mean. And if you’re trans and need support today, call the Trans Lifeline at 1-877-565-8860.
Trans friends: I see you and I love you. We will not let them erase you. We will fight this with you.
Carlton Drake fighting Eddie Brock without their respective symbiotes intact was fucking hilarious because you got this veggie smoothie-slurping twink trying to fight this garbage-eating, tater tot-filled twunk at an air shuttle takeoff site like that’s trying to one-up the airport parking lot fight from Civil War in all the wrong ways. It’s like a noodle slapping at a breadstick.
The funniest line in the film.
Dear Diary,
Tried a new smoothie recipe today. It called for equal parts kale and spinach, but I find that a two to three ratio allows spinach’s more subtle flavors to shine. It just tastes that much more GREEN, if that makes any sense.
I’ve been experimenting with a phenethylamine-rich diet, too. Apparently, phenethylamine increases creativity and positive mood, which is something I’ve been struggling with lately. You’d think, after more than thirty years of it, that I’d be used to being called crazy. Always alone with my notebook during recess. Unable to connect to the other kids in robotics club. No boyfriend for the entirety of high school OR undergraduate. Well, I can blame that one on being so much younger and smarter than everyone else, but still. It was lonely.
Sometimes I STILL feel lonely. And maybe, just maybe, I AM the crazy one.
No. That can’t be right. Crazy is unchecked ravaging of the environment. Crazy is 800 million people starving – ONE IN NINE! – when there is not actually a food shortage, just capitalistically-motivated mismanagement. Crazy is all the racist, misogynist, anti-immigrant, anti-science, ANTI-HUMANITY fascists being voted into power. What I’M doing is trying to save the world.
Even if it feels like it doesn’t DESERVE to be saved by me. “Crazy.” I can’t believe people are still calling me crazy. Well, that’s what they said about Einstein, Ramanujan, Marie Curie, all the way back to Galileo. Sanity isn’t a popularity contest. It’s about vision.
Still. A boyfriend would be nice.
It’s fine, though. I’ll have no trouble finding a boyfriend when I’m leading humanity to their salvation, in a solar system far, far away.
In the meantime, I’ve got chocolate. (For the phenethylamine.)
i just cant get over the lobster scene. like his friends are actively begging him, do not get into the lobster tank. please eddie. tom hardy you were in mad max fury road dont do this. and tom hardy looks at his friend like “i know i shouldnt do this. i shouldnt be getting into this lobster tank but i’m going to anyway. i’m already mostly inside. cant stop now. i’m sorry i dont want to be doing this either there’s just no other choice for me.” and then he takes a bg bite out of a live lobster that’s still in the shell and everything.
tom hardy doesn’t actually know he’s being possessed by an alien yet in the story. he’s just resigned himself to whatever fucking meltdown he seems to be having. he doesn’t even seem particularly surprised that things have gone this way for him. like ten minutes later he finds out his heart stopped working and hes just like “you asshole” and he throws his alien parasite against the wall like a water balloon. and then he just leaves and is immediately kidnapped. what a fucking wild ride tom hardy is on.
tom hardy’s actual superpower is being the exact same level of dysfunctional no matter what is happening in his life. so when everything’s going ok for him he self-destructs spectacularly, but when literally everything that can happen to a human being happens to him, he does, like, unrealistically well. climbing into a lobster tank and eating a live animal with large claws just like… “well, this is what’s happening to me today. i’m so sorry you have to watch this, man. anyway here goes, i’m going to bite into a living creature with my human mouth and then LOSE CONSCIOUSNESS”
this movie’s fucking killing me from the inside.
IT WASNT EVEN IN THE SCRIPT TOM HARDY IS JUST A FUCKING GENUINE MADMAN
@dasakuryo requested Bodhi + Dust floating in golden sunlight
Behind his eyelids eternity dances, sparkling.
His curtains still swaying after his mother yanks them to the side, letting Jedha’s early morning engulf his room in golden flames.
The ray of golden afternoon light teasing him as glare on his datapad’s screen. He scratches away at his homework, the tape holding his stylus together rubbing against his middle finger.
His sister leaving him to do all the housework, his mind wandering as he sweeps up the dust that settles on every free surface. It’s the construction, they all say, but his mother believes he’s just being lazy.
In the pilot’s seat, the setting star renders the scratches and dents of his viewport in painful clarity. Riddled with imperfections, but the speeder is good enough to win. Flying over sand dunes, the shoddy appearance doesn’t matter, only the love he pours into its parts.
Red and gold and yellow and orange and a thousand different shades of brown all brought alive by starlight. On Jedha even a measly fleck of dust looks ethereal. Glitter. Like stardust.
Here the Force lives, thrives, sings, touching every thing.
The Empire is black, white, grey. Pristine, no room for golden air. Just ventilation that leaves a metallic taste in Bodhi’s mouth. Like blood.
He hurtles through the vaccum of space. Fumes and grease that he scrubs and sweeps but never leaves. Chilly but not like home. No light, just warnings that blink on and off. Unnatural, erratic, like his breathing.
Then, Jedha again, so changed with a coating of something that settles everywhere. He’s lazy. It’s his fault. His fault. In the cell, catching in his eyelashes. Then sparks, real ones, not motes caught by the sun.
Jedha again, only for it to be swallowed by light. Caving in, dust becomes dirt becomes sand becomes soil becomes the whole entire moon.
Bodhi opens his eyes, and Jedha is gone.
Stardust. Bloodied, burnt, stardust.
He can’t shake the image out of his head. He can close his eyes and pretend he’s still warm in bed, sunlight orange against the back of his eyelids. Mother pulling the curtains back. Dust motes trapped by sunlight. Stardust made from flecks of stars, lit by stars.
It’s all gone. Now, nothing. Become nothing. Is nothing once again.
The Force touches everything on Jedha, has touched him, bound him into it. So he follows its call, soon after, and is stardust.
Bright, glittering, caught in the Force like his cocoon of blankets.
It’s all gone, yet here once again. Tiny, insignificant Bodhi, set aflame, grows, becomes, a star.
There’s a lot of young people who are going to be eligible to vote in America during this election so in light of the fact that this website is currently thrumming with political interest I’d just like to remind them that abstaining from voting is not useful or radical, it’s playing right into the hands of the people who want this country to progress backwards. I can guarantee you that there will be an ENORMOUS conservative turn out and if the younger generation doesn’t match it it will literally be a disaster
Rebellions are built on hope 