…I could have told you that 🤷
Source: https://x.com/BriannaWu/status/1984574165643403370
Not my usual kind of source (Xitter), but I want any centrists out there who ask trans people to “just get along” / compromise with actual hate groups that want them eradicated to know that it doesn’t work.
There is no such thing as a reasonable bigot, by definition.
This is why advocating for “finding middle ground”, or centrism, or this repackaged warmed over Abundance crap is so toxic.
You can’t match these people half way. you have to beat them
Most arguments have a middle ground, but its a case by case basis. In this case the sides are:
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let a marginalized group experience a little joy and feel comfortable in their bodies
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refuse to accept that a middle school understanding of gender and biology might not be totally correct.
Meeting in the middle here is how you get second class citizens.
I see a lot of (often well deserved) shit talk about centrists/middle ground. Honestly, it IS silly to talk about middle ground between reason and raw hate. I do, however, doubt myself if I look around and find myself spouting the most extreme ideas on a given topic. How isnt that scary to people? I dont want to be the fanatic. I was raised with talk about the middle path and the golden mean. Virtue in courage is found between recklessness and cowardice. I still subscribe to that notion, but absolutely recognize how one can lull themselves into false means based on the prevailing culture (Overton window). Still, I dont see how it is that hard to have some bedrock principals, and use those to anchor a true middle ground.
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Beat them with rods is the only method.
(Not sarcasm)
Political centrism works well in a staunch democracy with a certain Overton window. As soon as these Alt-Righters have influence in a country, it doesn’t work anymore.
It’s sad she’s so close but still on ‘I want a middle ground on these issues’ really? Like…. She is okay with a little disrespect? A little discrimination?
Just a little second class citizen, as a treat.
Taking the middle ground with Nazis is saying you want the holocaust to happen but only three million jews should die.
She is desperate for a place that she can be considered “one of the good ones” with the implicit idea of “there are bad ones and they deserve to be treated worse than the good ones”. She doesn’t understand that the world builds rules on foundational ideas that are just straw men dressed in stereotypes - no one bothers with distinction.
What’s more, if she would just embrace who she is, reject the bigots, and joins the lgbt community…. She will find people who will treat her well. And maybe together maybe we can build a better world……
just like Jenner wants, a little here and there. still not palatable to magats though.
First off, Brianna Wu is not my sister or comrade, so she can write that down.
“The problem is, they are getting crazier and crazier.”
They’re not, they just don’t feel the need to hide those parts of their goals any more, and you should have listened to us when we warned you about those goals.
And you should be listening to us now about their future goals.
They kinda are. Not at the fringes, there used to be targeted outing campaigns in the hopes of getting trans people fired or killed back in the day, but what was once extreme personal bigotry has become a pipeline and is increasingly legitimized by mainstream right wing politics. If you ask the average bush era republican if the medical establishment should be forced to institutionalize trans people, they’d reply with a slur for sure but they’d not support overriding medical institutions.
Goldwater was absolute dogwater but he was right about republicans in 1981…
“On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs."
“Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
Even after all of that, she still doesn’t get it:
I think many of our most extreme ideas are bad. But theirs are worse.
The problem is that “our” (using quotes as I’m only progressive, not LGBTQ+) most extreme ideas are only held by a minority of progressive people, and meanwhile the things she thinks are their “most extreme ideas” are the ones that she saw personally, while interacting with people who don’t mind interacting with a trans-woman. Those aren’t their “most extreme ideas.” They’re their mainstream ideas.
She’s comparing our most extreme ideas against their mainstream ideas.
I’m not sure who she’s referring to when she says our there but whoever it is would be insane to invite her in with that take
Also, she doesn’t say what our most extreme ideas are. The most extreme idea she mentions is allowing trans-women to compete in women’s sports. But I think that’s probably a mainstream belief, and also the one that is best supported by science.
(Meanwhile, the most extreme idea of theirs that she mentions is that trans-women should face non-stop violent rape if they go to prison.)
Also, she doesn’t say what our most extreme ideas are.
If I were to try to define the most extreme positions held by any in our community (in regards to trans issues), they might be:
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Bathroom access based on identity only. Very few people are actually like this. But some folks would say that all that is needed to switch bathrooms is identifying as a different gender. So it’s perfectly acceptable for a person dressed in male clothing, with a beard, using a deep voice, etc. to use the women’s restroom as long as they identify as female. Very few trans folks would be caught dead doing that. Most recognize that there is a certain give and take, a negotiation of social spaces. I imagine most would say you shouldn’t have to pass in order to use the bathroom, but most would recognize that it’s going to cause a ton of unnecessary friction and hate if someone fully masculine-presenting uses the women’s restroom. I don’t think people who can’t pass should be banished from the bathroom that matches their identity. But I myself would be very uncomfortable sharing the women’s restroom with an entirely masculine-presenting person, trans or not.
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Unrealistic/impractical pronoun expectations. Some folks confuse “gender is a social construct” with “nothing is real and nothing matters.” Pronouns are a social construct. That doesn’t mean they mean nothing; it means they have socially constructed definitions. If I invent a new pronoun tomorrow and start demanding others call me it, that isn’t a social construction. That’s just something I invented and am now imposing on others without their participation or consent. In order to socially construct something, there must be a meeting of the minds, a shared milieu of understanding. A pronoun, if you expect people to actually use it, can’t be something you just invented. It has to be something negotiated among a large number of people. This is why the pronouns people tend to actually use are he, she, and they. Most others get little use beyond extremely online teenagers. Pronouns are meant to be shorthand for characteristics of your identity. If your pronoun is so unique that no one has any idea what the hell it means, you’re not using a pronoun, you’re just using a nickname.
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Sports based purely on identity with no qualifiers. I support trans women playing on women’s teams and trans men playing on men’s teams. But that’s not just because of identity, but because I recognize that the science says that trans women don’t have any advantages after a few years on HRT. I wouldn’t however support trans women who still have male testosterone levels competing on women’s teams. That’s just about basic fairness. But, some would say that it’s just sports, and that respect for identity matters more than athletic fairness, and that no one should have to seek out medical treatment they may not otherwise want. Fair enough, but I would disagree.
Still, these are extremes. The vast, vast majority of trans people wouldn’t switch bathrooms before at least changing their presentation, use pronouns they can actually expect other people to use, and wouldn’t expect to switch sports teams without altering their own hormones. If TERFs really were interested in compromise, these are the issues we could compromise on. So maybe we restrict bathrooms based on legal identity, but in turn we make it really easy to change your legal identity, say up to once per year. And we have clear social expectations about the rules of bathrooms. So it’s OK if you don’t fully pass, but you shouldn’t be rocking a beard in the women’s restroom. Or, we come to a compromise on pronouns. You can have your close friends call you whatever you want, but the only pronouns you should expect others to recognize are the broad and generic he, she, and they. We compromise by, for example, making it workplace harassment to not respect someone’s pronouns. But in turn we trans people also don’t demand that people learn hundreds of new pronouns or start referring to human beings as inanimate objects. Or, we regulate sports, but we don’t try to ban trans people from sports all together. We follow the science that says trans women have no advantage after a few years on E. You can’t change your teams based purely on self-ID, but we do give trans men and women a clear and open path to participate fully and equally in athletics.
If TERFs and other conservatives really were just looking for a reasonable compromise, these are the types of issues we could compromise on. But, as the post notes, you give these bastards an inch and they’ll take a mile.
My proposition to solve the bathroom issue is making gendered bathrooms illegal and mandating proper cubicle walls that guarantee privacy. The harassment that gender neutral bathrooms are claimed to cause is vastly exagerrated by the right wing. It does not outweigh the harassment towards gender minorities that gendered bathrooms cause.
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I would love to know what those extreme left ideas that are bad are. Like 99% of progressive ideas boil down to “stop treating other people like shit.”
“You know, I’m starting to think these ethnicity-critical Nazis can’t be reasoned with.”
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once again ignoring entirely that trans masc people exist and we are impacted by the bullshit she spouts as well. what impacts one of us affects all of us, and I am not your fucking sister.
Transmascs aren’t part of her personal experience. That makes sense to me. Also they are not the primary enemy of the Anti-Trans people.
Also they are not the primary enemy of the Anti-Trans people.
In the same way that lesbians weren’t the “primary enemy” of Anti-Gay people. They ate shit all the same.
Yes.
In a negotiation its important to ask for more than you want. Compromise is what you reach during negotiations. If you start your negotiations from a pre-compromised position, you’re just ceding ground to the other side.
Support the extremists. Support those who go too far and ask too much, as that’s the only way to reach a fair and reasonable compromise.
Congrats, you have a better grasp of negotiation than a 6-figure-salary consultant contracted to the DNC.
Oh, they ask for more than they want.
For those who are not familiar with Brianna Wu: She has tried to be a left-wing grifter, before she discovered that it got her nowhere and thus decided to be a right-wing grifter instead. She tried to the right-wing’s “good trans woman”, agreeing with everything they said, until the above message. And yeah, she is already trying to spin this yet again…
And if you think that all of that is rather weird, she is also the creator of this masterpiece.
Cyborg Martin Luther King Jr. being attacked by scantily clad KKK women
Had to read that a couple of times for it to sink in.
what the hell was that last image
A good compromise is never just halfway between two policies. It requires understanding both perspectives and addressing their actual problems. So the compromise here would be trans rights for trans people, and free mental health care for anti-trans people.
The Trans Athlete debate also never seems to address the fact that it’s all unfair from the get go. Being born to a poor family? Being born with a birth defect? Being born into an unsupportive family/community? Being born at the wrong time of year?
It also shouldn’t matter how well someone does in sports. No athlete is using their skills in the work place and students shouldn’t need athletics scholarships to pay for school. It should just be for fun with nothing on the line.
In the real world, it doesn’t even cause a real fairness issue. The Olympics started allowing trans competitors in the 90s, but there’s never been a trans medal winner. If there was a real advantage, then you’d expect the best person at some sports in some counties to be trans, so there to be trans athletes competing, and their advantage to put them on the podium. You’d also potentially expect some countries to pad their team with trans people to get more medals. This hasn’t happened.
The trans athlete debate was a solved problem before the right wing learned about it. Let the professional authority body of whatever sport, in collaboration with relevant medical professionals, determine what hormone levels or transition progress is qualifying or unqualifying in each individual sport in a case by case basis. Because we tried this before, with genetic testing of Olympic female athletes and enough turned out intersex or androgyn disordered that they stopped doing it.
Is Brianna wu grifting to the left because she realizes there isn’t a place for her on the right anymore? I’m a bit too cynical to believe this is legitimate since the right has been like this for quite a while. Just with the trump admin the center right position on the trans movement is not a profitable option for pundits anymore
If this truly is a come to Jesus moment, I’ll believe it if she can back it up over time
My attitude after the last election is trust no republican, they’ll go back the second they can while crying to the left when they’re being mistreated by their own.
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I hope you’re right!
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Wu is just the latest poster child for Reactionary Uncle Tom washouts. There’s internet graveyards full of would-be pundits and ex-liberal turncoats who realized far too late that The Log Cabin Republicans and Blacks for Trump weren’t going to protect them when fascists came knocking.
The thing you need to recognize about Wu - more than anything else - is that she comes from money. Look at my Porsche collection money. She’s reactionary because that’s where she eats. And pivoting her identity as a Trans Woman into an income stream as a reactionary poster is just the path failkids of the GenZ+ generations are trained into.
Brianna Wu is a product of her material conditions. In a better world, she wouldn’t be able to horde wealth at her neighbors’ expense. And she wouldn’t have an economic incentive to fuck over her Trans peers in hopes of maintaining her precarious position among the wealthy elites.
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Not my sister.
Me over here with actually somewhat radical positions.
All HRT should be available OTC. (Yes, including T.)
A parent denying a child access to puberty blockers should be required to pay reparations if the child continues to identify as trans into adulthood.
Require unisex bathrooms for any business larger than a bananna stand.
I’m going to push back on OTC HRT because of the health risks. Supraphysiologic estrogen and testosterone can both have lethal side effects, so correct dosing and monitoring for health complications are essential components of trans healthcare.
Both are already OTC in most of the world, specifically most developing countries.
More importantly, you are applying an insane and bad-faith standard when assessing medication. ANY medication can have lethal side effects. Down a bottle full of Tylenol and you’ll condemn yourself to a slow agonizing death of liver failure. Yet you can buy that shit at gas stations.
You answered the wrong question. You asked, “can HRT be dangerous?” Any rational person trying to form an unbiased opinion about it would ask, “is HRT of comparable risk to existing OTC medications?”
In countries besides America, Tylenol comes in blister packs of maybe 20 total pills per package in a lower dose than the American variation. The drug and marketing regulations here are not a good example and I think a lot of medications that are currently OTC need to be much more closely regulated or have things like the inconvenient packaging and MUCH better warnings on them for patient safety.
That being said, poorly managed (or un-managed) HRT has more potential for significant harm than most OTC medications. There are many complications that can come from exogenous hormone treatment for both trans and cis patients, and the risks need to be adequately assessed and managed. Estrogen significantly increases the risk of blood clots and strokes, and Testosterone drastically increases the risk of heart attack and organ failure if not dosed appropriately.
In no way do I intend to restrict trans healthcare, but most medications on the market in America need to be much more closely regulated than they are now because of the risks of harms that can vastly outweigh the benefits, especially when not dosed or monitored accurately.
You’re spreading anti trans FUD. The risks are extremely modest. The risks you cite, like heart attack risk on T, are just from moving an FTM person from a female to make heart attack profile. Men have a greater risk of heart attack than women do. Having a male hormone profile gives you male health risks. But people like you like to spread fear by citing this as an effect of HRT.
You’re portraying hrt as this crazy substance, but we’re talking bioidentical hormones here. They are the same exact molecules that are produced naturally.
You are shamelessly spreading anti trans propaganda. Or take estrogen for example. Trans women raise their E levels to the 100-300 range, the normal female E range. Yet cis women, when pregnant, experience E levels 10-20 times those levels. The human body can handle very high levels of estrogen quite well. You can take 10x the recommended E dose and still be extremely unlikely to have any adverse effects from it.
Show me one single person that has died from the misuse of modern bioidentical hormones. Find me one. Because hrt is absolutely far safer than almost every otc medication out there. You can literally take 10x the recommended doses. That’s how safe it is. It’s safe because we’re talking the exact same molecules that are made by the body.
There’s a reason diy is so common among the trans community. Even most doctors are comically ignorant and repeat long disproven myths like the ones you repeat here.
HRT is extremely safe when dosed appropriately. As I said in another comment, I’m less worried about trans folks getting the HRT wrong than cis people taking a bunch of extra hormones because some influencer convinced them that more estrogen or more testosterone will fix all their health problems. Making something OTC makes it available to everyone, not just the people that need it. Trans people need HRT, cis people very rarely do.
And yet, other countries where HRT is OTC don’t have an epidemic of cis kids dead from taking T and E. Your concern is purely hypothetical. Meanwhile we have real world data showing the risks of OTC HRT are minimal. And even cis people taking it have very low risks, comparable to other otc medications.
Social media leads people to do all sorts of stupid things. We don’t ban bleach because someone might try and drink it to cure covid.
It isn’t the cis kids I worry about. It’s the menopausal woman in the emergency department with a DVT and PE from the estrogen she got online on the advice of her chiropractor. It’s the man in his 50’s that thought testosterone would fix his lost libido and fatigue that now has to get coronary artery stents because he got his dosing recommendations from body building influencers.
It’s the real patients I have seen and treated that concern me when these hormones aren’t even that freely available. It’s not a hypothetical for me, it’s real people that have suffered real harm even if they didn’t die from it.
You can get lethal effects from nicotine, alcohol, bleach, ammonia, and many, many combinations of chemicals that are available with, at most, age verification.
I’m all for people educating themselves as much as they want, from whatever sources they trust, but bodily autonomy DEMANDS someone be able to direct their own medication, including gender affirming medication. Doctor-as-gatekeeper is, IMO, not as good a model as Doctor-as-confidant-and-educator.
As a soon-to-be physician that has sought training in trans healthcare, I do not see my role as gatekeeper, but the role of educator includes teaching about and monitoring for the risks and complications that can come from HRT. Estrogen and Testosterone are both powerful and potentially dangerous hormones and I do not want to see my trans patients dying from strokes or heart attacks that could have been prevented with more careful dosing of their HRT.
No one imagines they are the bad guy. But, if a patient asks for a drug and you deny it to them, you are being a gatekeeper. I imagine you are only doing this for “good reasons”, but you are still violating their bodily autonomy.
To be clear: I am not saying this about HRT specifically because, most of the time, HRT is safe when dosed appropriately.
That being said, if I think a medication is going to be dangerous, harmful, or lethal to a patient and I prescribe it anyways, I am legally and morally liable for any harm that comes to them from that medication. I have had conversations with patients about weight loss drugs that they really want, but that would be extremely dangerous based on other comorbid conditions like heart problems or pancreas issues. If a patient asks me for something that I think is unsafe, I engage them in a discussion about why they want that medication, the risks and benefits of it, and possible alternatives that could be safer. If a patient is dead-set on getting a medication that is very likely to harm them, I’m not going to write that prescription because if the worst happened, their blood is on my hands.
It is very uncommon that physicians refuse to prescribe something that a patient is asking for specifically. The much more common situation ends up being that the physician can write the prescription, but insurance won’t pay for it. There are obviously some physicians out there that refuse to prescribe things like birth control based on their personal beliefs, but they are obligated to refer that patient to a provider that will give them the prescription.
If a patient is dead-set on getting a medication that is very likely to harm them, I’m not going to write that prescription
Then, you don’t value bodily autonomy as much as I do, and will deny it to some of your patients, gatekeeping – no matter what you “think” you are doing.
Does my ethical autonomy count for nothing? Am I really obligated under your worldview to harm my patients by acquiescing to their demands carte blanche?
Even as a medical student, I have had patients die in my care from things I couldn’t do anything about. I had no way to save them because the medicine to fix the problem simply does not exist. As an ER tech, I have had multiple times where the physician running the code called the time of death while I was the one doing compressions on the patient. Most of those were children. I am already haunted by the patients I have lost through no malpractice, negligence, incompetence, or malice of my own. I refuse to intentionally add to my nightmares by doing something that I truly believe would harm my patient, even if it is what they are asking for.
DIY saved my life. I purchased bloodtests and monitored my own treatment. But it would have been a lot safer had I not needed to order estrogen online from a foreign supplier.
I am very glad that you were able to get your own care and didn’t have any bad outcomes. On the other hand, I’ve had cis-female patients go to naturopaths or chiropractors to get estrogen and/or testosterone pellets for peri-menopause symptoms and they had no idea what the risks were. In the emergency department, I’ve had cis-female patients on estrogen replacement therapy that was not well managed show up with DVTs. Cis-male patients on supraphysiologic testosterone are at risk for several different kinds of organ failure along with a drastically increased risk of heart attacks.
I don’t think that trans patients are terribly likely to harm themselves with DIY HRT, but having hormones available OTC is going to lead to a lot of cis people getting sick or getting killed by taking extra hormones to try to fix their problems because scammers and quacks have convinced them that hormones will magically fix all of their problems.
You’re still focusing on risk and not relative risk. You’re answering the wrong question. You are addressing whether HRT can have health risks. You’re completely ignoring whether its health risks are in any way worse than other OTC medications. That is the question here. You’ll die if you drink enough tap water. Do you have any evidence at all that HRT is riskier than other typical OTC medications? Cause I’m not seeing any here. Instead you’re treating HRT as its own unique and special category, rather than just assessing it like very other medication.
I also said that many OTC medications need to be more strictly regulated. The American capitalistic approach to marketing drugs is obscene and needs to be heavily reigned in. HRT is not a special category of medication because every substance that has a desired effect also has side effects that need to be considered. Acetaminophen (aka paracetamol or Tylenol) in other countries is regulated similar to how pseudoephedrine (Sudafed) is regulated as in needing to get it from the pharmacist in limited quantities in individual blister packs. It is absurd how poorly controlled dangerous medications are in this country, but it’s unlikely that will ever change because of the attitudes of American individualism and pharma lobbying groups.
I don’t believe parents should be able to make any permanent decisions about a child’s body.
This includes hormones, tattoos, genital mutilation of any kind, plastic surgery, piercings.
Children cannot provide consent for anything.
Unfortunately doing nothing is still a choice. And things aren’t better just because they are natural.
It is morally abominable to believe that it is better for 100 trans kids to go through the Hell on Earth of the wrong puberty than for one cis kid to mistakenly go on puberty blockers or HRT. It shows that you fundamentally believe the life of 1 cis person to be worth the lives of 100 trans people. You do not believe in the equal moral value of every human life. You fundamentally, in your heart of hearts, believe trans people to be subhuman, because you do not place the value of their pain anywhere near that of cis people.
I think that ratio is an important one in this debate. Is it actually around 1% (of those reporting dysphoria ) that decide it was a mistake post puberty?
Also sorry if dysphoria is the wrong word.
HRT has a success rate over 90%, measured as more than 90% of people who go on HRT report an improvement in their quality of life compared to before HRT. Of that other roughly 10%, the majority report reasons outside of regret for stopping HRT. Things like: medical complications, financial reasons, loss of jobs or housing due to being visibly trans, loss of friends and family due to being trans, assault or rape, etc., and most report that they would start HRT again as soon as possible. Only a small portion of that 10% say that they regret taking HRT and that it was a mistake.
So is it literally 1%? I don’t know, but it’s certainly less than 10%, which gives HRT one of the highest success rates in the field of medicine. By comparison, antidepressants have a success rate somewhere around 36% and knee replacement surgery hovers a little over 50%.
The biggest regrets reported by those who take HRT are that they didn’t start sooner, and/or being forced through an unwanted puberty with permanent life-altering effects as a child - which is why puberty blockers are a critical component of trans healthcare. Puberty blockers have been in use for young girls since the 80s for what’s known as “precocious puberty” - when a girl starts puberty at a very young age, usually around 8 but can be as young as 4. Nobody cared when it was cis girls taking them so that they would start puberty at a normal age. But when trans people started taking them to avoid permanent, life-altering changes until they’re old enough to consent to whether or not they want to go on HRT, puberty blockers suddenly became this untested drug being forced upon young boys by nefarious outside forces in the public eye.
Good thing puberty blockers are reversible.
But you don’t actually care about that do you? You’ll just move the goalposts.
I agree parents should not force kids to have piercings. However trans health is a healthcare issue, like other health conditions. There is a problem that is causing suffering. In healthcare, we typically rely on parents as guardians to give legal consent, but kids also have to give their “assent” which carries crucial moral weight in the situation. While kids might not have the capacity to give fully informed consent, they can give assent based on their best understanding.
We apply this to things like cancer treatment, corrective plastic surgery, counselling, and mental health medication for kids. Some of these can be even more permanent and life-altering than hormone blockers for kids (we don’t allow bottom surgery for kids).
This is why transcare, like most healthcare for kids, should involve a team of healthcare professionals, guardians, and crucially the child themselves in patient-centered decision-making.
Do bad decisions happen? Yes. Are there misguided professionals, guardians, and kid patients? Yes. But this kind of care as standard is far better than parents deciding, or kids being left alone to figure it out themselves, or worse, policy-makers, who don’t give a shit about evidence-based healthcare, deciding no trans kids get care. That’s right, banning transcare is also making a decision for people with the consequence that trans kids continue to experience profound suffering without care.
Do you feel the same about all life saving medicine as you do about trans health care?
Sorry kid, we can’t remove your appendix. Kids can’t give consent and I can’t give it as your parent. So, I guess you’ll die.
I don’t believe parents should be able to make any permanent decisions about a child’s body. This includes hormones, tattoos, genital mutilation of any kind, plastic surgery, piercings.
You’re right - which is why puberty blockers should be required by law for all children until they’re 18 and can decide for themselves which puberty is right for them.
Children don’t consent to being brought into existence and yet we constantly do so. They can’t consent, as one reply pointed out, to medical care either.
Children can’t consent to being refused anything that they ask for either.
And even if the denial is on the basis of “their own good” they’ll grow to rightfully resent being denied things if it has a significant impact on them into adulthood and rightfully fucking hate their parents for it. Gender transitioning is one such thing.
Children are not ours to own and control and we owe them for dragging them into existence to critically think about their long term well being not just blindly applying some truism to every decision you make about their lives under your care.
