The costs of trans visibility
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The costs of trans visibility

Yesterday, Dylan Mulvaney broke her silence: https://www.tiktok.com/@dylanmulvaney/vi....

For context, this is a trans influencer who built a 10 million strong following on TikTok. She took a brand deal with budweiser to post an ad on an instagram, and the anti-trans right went absolutely ballistic, calling for a boycott, condemning the company, and to some perhaps unknowable degree it influenced that Budweiser sales dropped by a 1/4 and

. Dylan speaks more personally about the effect of the hatred on her.

What strikes me about this story is that it is just about visibility. This isn't inclusion in sports or gender-affirming care for minors, it was just that a trans person was visible. This wasn't even visibility in a TV commerical that a poor right-winger is forced to see, it was an ad on her own instagram page. We're all in our own social media algorithm influenced bubbles, but from my vantage point it really has seemed that in the last year or so things have just gotten worse for trans people and the backlash to even minor visibility is growing.

We need to do better.

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30 June 2023 at 04:48 PM
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6827 Replies

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by Luciom k

But if i have to pay for it , i feel i have a right to decide when and how and why it is reasonable to pay for it, don't I? and no, i won't let that decision be made by "experts", you don't delegate fiscal matters to expert.

Pretty sure you don't have the right to dictate how tax dollars are spent. You can vote for the person you hope will enact policy that will spend tax dollars how you would want, but ultimately you have no right to decide or control in how decisions are made.


by jjjou812 k

Luciom, are you pro choice or pro life? While I know it's off topic, I am curious given your reasoning above.

I am pro freedom which means that until the fetus is approximable to a person, i am in favor of no question asked abortions (i would remove the need for prescription of abortion pills for example, and possibly subsidize them with taxpayer money given the huge positive externalities), because there are no other arguments outside of "body autonomy" ones to be had.

Same reason why i am against mandating any medical procedure to any legally conscious adult without absolutely no exceptions ever (that includes vaccine mandates of course).

The uniqueness of abortion is that at some point it's about 2 individuals freedom. When that happens, is the matter of debate. The rest of the debate is noise and isn't applicable rationally imo.

I personally agree with the median european opinion (i actually skew a little on the left on that, given that for the first 12-14 weeks i would waive all time losses, all prescription, all needs to talk to physicians and so on). So My opinion is extremely easy abortion first trimester (abundant, up to 14, anyway up at the very least until you can have a sure answer to the question of chromosome deformity), medium difficulty abortion second trimester, and very hard to allow abortion in the third. Details might vary as to what constitutes medium and hard but i think you get the idea.

But again the above is only because at some point the fetus becomes a person [EDIT: and as such, with full legal protection], and i disagree with the notion it only becomes one when it starts to breath autonomously, which was the normal take in old societies because they didn't have ecographic machines but we now know better.

Then there is the "minor" thing of the baby having 2 parents not one, and it's not that obvious that only one of them, even if they carry higher costs, should have a say. That is partially solvable by removing any obligation upon the father to ever pay anything for the child, if he wanted an abortion and the mother didn't, but many jurisdictions don't allow that (and they should). But that's minor compared to the rest.


by coordi k

Pretty sure you don't have the right to dictate how tax dollars are spent. You can vote for the person you hope will enact policy that will spend tax dollars how you would want, but ultimately you have no right to decide or control in how decisions are made.

I have a right to have an opinion on how they should be spent then of course it's majority rule, as a necessity of democracy (although i would love for a lot of expenses to be constitutionally illegal for the state but that's yet another topic).


by Luciom k


But if i have to pay for it , i feel i have a right to decide when and how and why it is reasonable to pay for it, don't I?

.

In what manner do you think you are paying for the service?

Otherwise, I think the obvious answer to this is no. You don't get decide if your taxes go to military spending, you don't get to decide if your insurance covers births and medical treatment you don't approve of.


by jjjou812 k

In what manner do you think you are paying for the service?

Otherwise, I think the obvious answer to this is no. You don't get decide if your taxes go to military spending, you don't get to decide if your insurance covers births and medical treatment you don't approve of.

So given "we don't get to decide if and how much of my taxes go to military services", you would tell someone who is a critic of military spending to stop talking about it because he can't decide about that? are you serious? it's a fiscal & regulatory matter and every taxpayer has a right to discuss every topic with fiscal & regulatory implications!

If medicaid money is spent for gender care, if CHIP money is spent for gender care, if medicare money is spent to fix the damage of a badly implemented transition, if health insurance gets more expensive because insurers are legally mandated to cover gender care, then that's something that takes money out of everyone pocket so everyone has a right to an opinion on wheter it's proper or not to have such a legal arrangement.


by Luciom k

It isn't an hyperbole when we are told by prominent politicians that gender care for minors...

The hyperbole is describing a medical procedure done by doctors with informed consent as a "mutilation." It's obvious, ham-fisted rhetoric that you need to deploy because your core ideas are broken. Constantly smearing and belittling a class of people that you know are marginalized and at risk of suicide, it's such an utterly broken value system.


No one is saying you don't have a right to voice your opinion, but you have no right to make the specific determinations of how your taxes (or insurance monies) are spent. You can't earmark them only for roads or for only non gender related care. The government can do that (with the equal pro clause caveat) but you the taxpayer, cannot.

Thanks for answering the abortion question.


by Trolly McTrollson k

The hyperbole is describing a medical procedure done by doctors with informed consent as a "mutilation." It's obvious, ham-fisted rhetoric that you need to deploy because your core ideas are broken. Constantly smearing and belittling a class of people that you know are marginalized and at risk of suicide, it's such an utterly broken value system.

If you have to cut a leg because otherwise the patient dies, even with the consent of the patient, that's still a mutilation.

My core idea is that we shouldn't need to have this conversation, because no one would even think of prescribing hormones, puberty blockers, and physical mutilation to minors who feel they are of the opposite sex, while adults would be free in my model, to do whatever they want with their body no question asked, paying out of pocket.

Dictionary confirms the meaning of mutilation though, it doesn't matter if it is consensual or not, or if doctors are implied in it or not, not sure why the presence of doctors would change the meaning of words at all.


by jjjou812 k

No one is saying you don't have a right to voice your opinion, but you have no right to make the specific determinations of how your taxes (or insurance monies) are spent. You can't earmark them only for roads or for only non gender related care. The government can do that (with the equal pro clause caveat) but you the taxpayer, cannot.

Thanks for answering the abortion question.

I mean i thought it was clear that the use of "decide" and so on are normative "should", ie "how one would like things to be", not how things are.


by Luciom k

If you have to cut a leg because otherwise the patient dies, even with the consent of the patient, that's still a mutilation.

My core idea is that we shouldn't need to have this conversation, because no one would even think of prescribing hormones, puberty blockers, and physical mutilation to minors who feel they are of the opposite sex, while adults would be free in my model, to do whatever they want with their body no question asked, payin

The word mutilation has an overwhelmingly negative connotation in modern vernacular. Its not an innocent usage of the word.

Some definitions even have it tied to 'ruinous affects on ones quality of life', so it actually seems quite intentional usage in this context....


by Luciom k

If you have to cut a leg because otherwise the patient dies, even with the consent of the patient, that's still a mutilation.

That's an "amputation." No one organically calls an amputation a "mutilation" unless something goes horribly wrong with the procedure. I mean, anyone reading this can see you're peddling bullshit, what's the point?

by Luciom k

My core idea is that we shouldn't need to have this conversation

We don't. You could just enjoy your life and stop trying to interfere with the private medical decisions families make.


by Luciom k

If you have to cut a leg because otherwise the patient dies, even with the consent of the patient, that's still a mutilation.

Enough of these silly games. Obviously calling it "mutilation" is trying to evoke a certain sharply negative connotation. Amputees don't complain that doctors "mutilated" their necessary amputations. If your argument was as strong as you think it is, you should be able to make it without choosing the most charged possible word to describe this medical procedure.


by uke_master k

Enough of these silly games. Obviously calling it "mutilation" is trying to evoke a certain sharply negative connotation. Amputees don't complain that doctors "mutilated" their necessary amputations. If your argument was as strong as you think it is, you should be able to make it without choosing the most charged possible word to describe this medical procedure.

so now charged words are an issue

got it


by uke_master k

Enough of these silly games. Obviously calling it "mutilation" is trying to evoke a certain sharply negative connotation. Amputees don't complain that doctors "mutilated" their necessary amputations. If your argument was as strong as you think it is, you should be able to make it without choosing the most charged possible word to describe this medical procedure.

Amputees and mutilated people actually can and do complain if later on they discover such mutilation wasn't actually medically necessary for them.

There are plenty of tort law cases of people suing because surgery was too invasive on the skin or had too big of an effect on other organs and so on


by rickroll k

so now charged words are an issue

got it

I mean, yeah. Always have been.

That is the propaganda. Kind of like in the anti pitbull thread where they love to describe children getting ripped to bits. How can you not feel emotionally charged when thinking about those shifty gays INDOCTRINATING your children to MUTILATE their genitals? They want to BRAINWASH your child in LIBERAL DISTOPIAN schools while you are busy making America great, again.

Orrrr maybe they just want to be treated like human beings. I dunno, I always get those two goals mixed up.


by coordi k

I mean, yeah. Always have been.

That is the propaganda. Kind of like in the anti pitbull thread where they love to describe children getting ripped to bits. How can you not feel emotionally charged when thinking about those shifty gays INDOCTRINATING your children to MUTILATE their genitals? They want to BRAINWASH your child in LIBERAL DISTOPIAN schools while you are busy making America great, again.

Orrrr maybe they just want to be tre

Are you in favour of taxpayer paid liposuction?


by Luciom k

Amputees and mutilated people actually can and do complain if later on they discover such mutilation wasn't actually medically necessary for them.

There are plenty of tort law cases of people suing because surgery was too invasive on the skin or had too big of an effect on other organs and so on

Which is also a remedy available to those unsatisfied with a transition procedure. Are you going to support outlawing amputations being performed by medical doctors?


by Luciom k

Are you in favour of taxpayer paid liposuction?

Being Trans isn't the same as being fat


by coordi k

I mean, yeah. Always have been.

That is the propaganda. Kind of like in the anti pitbull thread where they love to describe children getting ripped to bits. How can you not feel emotionally charged when thinking about those shifty gays INDOCTRINATING your children to MUTILATE their genitals? They want to BRAINWASH your child in LIBERAL DISTOPIAN schools while you are busy making America great, again.

Orrrr maybe they just want to be tre

no argument here are at all, in complete agreement

was just trying to highlight that it goes both ways


by Luciom k

I mean i thought it was clear that the use of "decide" and so on are normative "should", ie "how one would like things to be", not how things are.

No matter how hard you would like it to be, the govt will never let you earmark how your tax dollars are spent. Even when you donate money is hard to maintain that type of control.

There is also no normative value to me to be deciding specific medical issues by popular vote beyond life saving, medically necessary, elective or cosmetic.


Meisner's compadre back to mix it up here.


by coordi k

Being Trans isn't the same as being fat

Trans fats says hello


by Luckbox Inc k

Trans fats says hello

legit lol


by coordi k

Being Trans isn't the same as being fat

Are you in favour of taxpayer paid liposuction for fat people who are so because of reasons out of their control (however defined in a way that satisfies you with the idea that they couldn't avoid being fat)?

Are you in favour of taxpayer paid nose jobs not for respiratory reasons, but just because the nose is considered ugly by the individual and there is psychological suffering involved for him?


by jjjou812 k

No matter how hard you would like it to be, the govt will never let you earmark how your tax dollars are spent.

Is it hard being so dense? Or is it just a roll you are playing. Because it's perfectly clear to me what he was getting at.

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