Admin of lemmy.blahaj.zone

I can also be found on the microblog fediverse at @ada@blahaj.zone or on matrix at @ada:chat.blahaj.zone

  • 12 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: January 2nd, 2023

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  • I don’t know, I would not say that I knew automatically when I was born what’s the difference between “man” and “woman”.

    Nor did I. For me, it came around the same time I started to understand gender and sex. The more I understood it, the more I knew it was wrong.

    To me, “man” and “woman” can’t be labels that go beyond the social/behavioral because I don’t know what it feels like to be a man anymore than what I know it feels like to be a woman…

    For me, it was initially tied in the physical. I knew my body should have been different. I wished it was different. I dreamed, prayed, hoped and fantasized that it would be different. It was an awareness that I was “like them” with girls and “not like them” with boys. I knew it was wrong when I was grouped with boys.

    That’s what it felt like. Not an understanding of others peoples experiences, but an understanding of how my own sense of self was at odds with both my body, and the assumptions that my body created in people.

    For someone who doesn’t feel gender, then of course you aren’t going to understand the experience of folk who do, anymore than I can understand what it’s like to not feel it. All I can is that analogies about colour aren’t particularly apt here, because it doesn’t work like that. My gender doesn’t exist because of shared consensus (although it is shaped by that consensus). My gender doesn’t exist because I was able to understand other peoples experiences. My gender is just something I’ve always felt, and that I’ve tried to make sense of over the years. I describe it now in clear, defined terms, but when I was younger, it didn’t work like that. I knew my body was wrong, but the social stuff, the gender stuff? Finding the words for that would take decades. But even as I said, I was finding the words to describe an experience that was always there.


  • I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term, but what you’re describing is similar to the experience that many agender folk describe.

    Suffice to say, I experience gender very differently to you. I’ve “felt” my gender since before I hit puberty. Before I had the words to understand it, before I knew what femininity or masculinity even were, before I experienced my sexuality…


  • What makes me a woman is that I’m a woman. It really is that simple and has nothing to do with stereotypes. Stereotypes influence the way we express ourselves and our identities, they influence our behaviours, and the language we use. But they don’t determine who we are.

    I would be trans on a desert island. I would be trans if I was raised on an island of men and had never seen a woman. The language I use to talk about my identity would obviously be different, and even the way I understand it would be different, but underneath it all, I’d still be trans, even if it manifested differently.

    And that’s what I’m getting at. Sure, I’ll argue that the fact I use the word “woman” is based on the social context in which I was raised, because gender is at least partly socially defined. But the identity that I’m describing with that label, that exists at a level below social norms, and below stereotypes, even whilst being influenced by them.


  • I’m a trans woman. Before I transitioned, I wasn’t feminine. I never experimented with family members makeup or borrowed their clothing. Even now, 8 years after coming out and transitioning, I’m still not feminine. No one looked at me after I came out and said “Oh, it all makes sense now”. I don’t wear makeup, I don’t have my ears pierced, I’m loud, argumentative and competitive. I ride an illegally overpowered fat tyred monster bike, and I’m happiest in a tshirt and jeans.

    Yet I’m still very much a woman and very much trans.

    Of course, many trans folk do embrace gender stereotypes, but you need to understand, that is “after the fact”. For some folk, it’s simply a matter of protection and ensuring that their gender doesn’t get denied them by society. For others, it’s a source of joy, being able to embrace something that they were not able to explore earlier in their lives. And for others, it is inherently tied to how they experience their gender.

    But for all of us, it is not our gender, even if it is strongly connected.




  • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoFediverse@lemmy.mlFediForum Has Been Canceled
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    2 days ago

    I don’t understand how Kaliya’s statements can be controversial or classed as transphobia

    That’s because it’s mostly dog whistles and wedge tactics. It’s a rehashing of common transphobic talking points, but with the edges brushed off. It’s the way transphobia is portrayed to appear reasonable at first glance.

    The dog whistles are easy to miss if you aren’t familiar with them, but the sheer volume of them from her shows that they were absolutely intended. This isn’t accidentally repeating something, this is an active relisting of transphobic talking points predominantly utilised by transphobic groups.

    Sex isn’t a “gender orientation” it is really simple biology.

    There are unspoken parts to this. What she really means here, even though she doesn’t explicitly say it, is that sex is real, and thus gender isn’t, and because of that, sex is more important than gender. It’s the way transphobic folk often phrase things so they can have a facade of acceptance, whilst still being transphobic. "I’m not questioning your gender, but you’re still male and should be denied space

    Sex and gender might be distinct, but they’re related, often conflated and neither are inherently static, binary or immutable. Any attempt to draw a hard line between them, or to point at a dictionary definition is normally always said with the goal of validating exclusion, and that’s what is happening here.

    Gamete size – its really simple.

    This is a regular talking point used by transphobic groups. It is said precisely for the reasons I mentioned above. It’s an attempt to make a black and white, one sized fits all definition. And the reason that TERFs use it, is because to them, it’s a “gotcha” definition that allows them to exclude trans folk from spaces. And those reasons are there, but unspoken when Kaliya wrote that.

    Stop confusing young autistic vulnerable people.

    This is also a straight up transphobic talking point. It comes from transphobic literature that paints transgender identity as a form of social contagion, whilst also implying that autistic folk are more vulnerable to this social contagion. The specific context in which it is normally used by these transphobic groups is when talking about young trans men, by portraying them instead as vulnerable young girls.

    You think it IS moral to have male-bodied people who identify as trans women playing in elite comparative sport for female-bodied people?

    This is more dog whistle transphobia. The big give away here is that she can’t even give trans women the validity of their own identity. She defines trans women first as “male bodied” and secondly as “identitying as trans women”. There is a transphobic term “TIM”, that transphobes use as a slur against trans women. It means “trans identified male”. Transphobes like it, because it is a masculine name, and because it defines their identity as being male, whilst implying that the trans part is less real. The word “identified” here implies it is a phase, or a deceit.

    This comment from Kaliya is using that exact concept, but just skipping the acronym.

    Gender can be socially-constructed.

    Sure. Parts of it can be, and are socially constructed. But what she is really saying here is that gender isn’t as real as sex.

    There are only two sexes.

    See my earlier comment. When you try and make things black and white, and use strict definitions, generally, the reason for doing so is to validate a push for exclusion, which is exactly what this is.

    Telling male children who have feminine tights they must be female is what is happening and it is hurting boys.

    Once more, portraying trans identity as social contagion.

    culture has gone competely bonkers confusing sex and gender.

    Explicitly transphobic. Portrays trans folk as “bonkers”.

    Which is a lot of words to say, she’s a transphobe, and she is rehashing transphobic talking points, but framing them in such a way that the transphobia isn’t immediately obvious to folks who aren’t familiar with trans and gender diverse folk.


  • You don’t “confirm” it. It’s an attempt to describe a system/outcome. It’s a model of a system, not the system itself and no model is perfect, because all models are our attempt to understand and describe things, and there is no such thing as perfect understanding.

    However, it’s a highly accurate model, that explains things very well. So, either we will find that one day, we make a brand new, better model (this seems unlikely given the accuracy of the current model, but possible). Or, more likely, we continue to come to a better understanding of the system, and improve the model we use to describe it.







  • It was similar for me, but not quite the same. The thing I hated was starting from scratch. I’m very much not a distro hopper. Back in the day, I enjoyed the challenge of trying to troubleshoot issues and get the system working again, and that kept me interested, but eventually, I’d hit a problem I couldn’t resolve, and I’d have to start again from scratch, and at that point, I’d just go back to Windows.

    Now, I still get to do the same thing. If I break it, I get to learn how I broke it and try and fix it, and I find that process compelling. But because I’m using btrfs restore points now, I don’t get to the point where I have to start again from scratch. So I can work at solving it to the limit of my abilities, with confidence that if I can’t work it out, it’s not a huge issue.