Hey all! I started taking testosterone almost a month ago, and I decided to record the first self-administered injection I did. I’m not providing a transcription for this since there isn’t much continuous speaking, but I hope you enjoy watching me flounder.
TW for needles and stabbing.
(Donate to Stephanie’s legal defense fund!)
Stephanie Guttormson is the Operations Director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. She’s advised secular advocacy groups on trans issues, she debunks pseudoscience on her YouTube channel, and she’s a good friend. And now, she needs our help.
Recently, a lawsuit was filed against Stephanie by a so-called faith healer, Adam Miller, after she pointed out that his claims of faith healing are completely unsupportable. I mean, it’s faith healing. Seriously, does anyone actually think that does anything? Miller wants her video removed from YouTube, but his allegations of “copyright infringement” and “defamation” are extremely unlikely to hold up. This is just another frivolous lawsuit intended to harass critics and silence debate.
Open critique of religious claims is not something that can be considered disposable in a free society. And this takes on even greater importance when “faith-based” treatment is being offered as a substitute for actual medical care. This is like pharmacies that stock homeopathic products next to real medicine: bad enough on its own, but imagine if they sued anyone who pointed out why this is so irresponsible.
Stephanie has a legal defense fund set up at gofundme.com/srglegalfund. I hope that people will do what they can to support her defense. Stephanie is far from the only one debunking bad science and bad arguments on YouTube – harassment and silencing of skeptics is something that affects all of us. Support Stephanie. Screw faith healers.
Content notes for abuse, ableist slurs, misogynist slurs, beauty standards, drug use, mental illness
My mother considered herself a feminist. (She’s not dead, I just don’t talk to her any more and she might as well be.) She was also bipolar and had a difficult time communicating things in a way that made sense, even though she was intelligent and thoughtful about a lot of things.
Looking back on my childhood, I realize that there were messages she sort of tried to teach me, but didn’t effectively teach me at all. To me, it just looked like more things fitting into her patterns of erratic behavior, but now I understand why she behaved the way she did about me wanting to shave my legs and wear makeup, and why she didn’t mind walking around the house naked after a shower. A lot of my opinions were (unbeknownst to me) influenced by popular culture, so I looked down on her for some of it.
I first wanted to shave my legs and armpits when I was about 12. She stubbornly refused to let me for about a year, and I never just went and did it because she was abusive and generally I feared what would happen if I went against her directly, even if it had to do with my own body. All she ever said was that I was “too young” and that I “didn’t need to” shave my legs. It was never articulated, but now I think I understand her reasoning. Continue reading “Messages I wish my mom had actually taught me”
CN: transantagonism, discussion of hypothetical sexual assault/rape
The internet has been abuzz over this thing that happened:
[…] a Planet Fitness gym in Midland, Michigan revoked the membership of a woman who complained that the trans woman she was sharing a locker room with looked too much like a man.
Of course, this event has stirred up a bunch of conversation around whether trans people (often trans women) should have access to certain gendered spaces, namely bathrooms and locker rooms. Trans people and allies are basically of the opinion that it’s no big deal to let people pick the bathroom that’s appropriate for them and cis people need to shut the hell up about it. The opposition centers around how it can make (cis) women uncomfortable, and how there’s a chance that (cis) men could dress as women any time they wanted to gain access to these spaces and maybe attack the cis women.
It occurred to me recently that if a cis dude wanted to dress as a woman to enter a gendered restroom, he would have to a) pack the clothes and change into them right before entering the bathroom, risking detection by anyone paying attention, or b) wear the clothes out in public on the way to his dirty deed of peeking or whatever. (Which–if peeking is what you’re worried about–would mean that any cis women attracted to women would also not be allowed in the women’s room. Just saying.) Continue reading “Planet Fitness and Cis Tears”
TW: Discussion of victim-blaming in sexual assault, clothing
I wear shorts pretty much all-year ’round. That includes during the winter.
There are a lot of reasons why I wear shorts, and I become more familiar with them as the season progresses. Because people are constantly giving me shit for wearing shorts in the winter and I have to justify myself on a regular basis.
I’m poor and don’t have a ton of pairs of pants that are still intact enough to wear. I like to wear long socks that look cool. Long pants that are cut for female bodies are incredibly restrictive, and any sort of long pants make it hard to crouch and move around with ease and agility, as I’m wont to do. That makes it especially difficult to wear pants at the gas station I work at, where I have to walk around and do stuff all day.
But it’s winter. And customers tend to lose their minds a little bit over the fact that I wear shorts. Yes, I realize that it’s cold outside. However, I perform most of my job duties indoors, where they keep it a balmy 71°F. Continue reading “Wearing Shorts in the Winter (Concern Trolling)”
I generally try not to ask for favors for myself, but this isn’t for me, so today I’m going to use my extraordinarily limited platform to solicit help for my dad, step-mom, and two younger siblings.
My dad is presently unemployed, and my step-mom works part-time. Dad has fibromyalgia and other health issues which make it difficult to work. While my uncle is trying to hook him up with a job, Dad has aspirations to work at home making music (Soundcloud) and videos on his YouTube channel, DaveInABottle.
Before I go on about my weekend, just wanted to take a second to acknowledge that Darren Wilson is not being indicted for shooting and killing Mike Brown. Which is super shitty and terrifying. And now, back to being privileged…
So, yes! This past weekend, Skepticon happened. It’s the second one I’ve been to, the first being back in 2012. Apparently I took no pictures except a couple selfies of me being pretty before the prom Saturday night, which is classic Me. XD
The venue was different than the last Skepticon I went to. The Oasis Convention Center via the Ramada is a pretty nice place. The tables for various groups were constricted to a relatively small hallway thing though, which was sometimes less-than-comfortable, but otherwise the hotel experience was lovely. (My hubby and I actually stayed across the street, but w/e.)
There were lots of amazing talks and workshops, some of which will be available to watch on the internets. There are only four at the time of this posting, but time inexorably marches on. I didn’t see all of them, but I did thoroughly enjoy the ones I caught. Continue reading “Skepticon 7 was pretty fun!”
Over the years, the atheist movement has split asunder over the issue of whether social justice activism has a place within the atheist movement. Recently, a post on The Daily Banter caused a stir of conversation about it the likes of which I haven’t seen since Atheism+ started happening. (Though this one was markedly less impressive.)
The piece, written by Michael Luciano and entitled “Atheists Don’t Owe Your Social Justice Agenda a Damn Thing,” basically argues that social justice is something you do with your liberal hat on and not your atheist hat. He points out that all the word “atheist” means is that you don’t believe in gods and not necessarily that you support “liberal politics.”
It seems apparent to me, first of all, that atheism is a social justice issue. Heina points out in their post “Top Five Arguments the Atheist Agenda Doesn’t Have the Right to Use” that many things the atheist movement tries to fight for are social issues. A lot of atheist activism focuses on equal representation in and by the government and normalizing atheism, the goals of which are to eliminate the ways atheists are harmed as a minority. Seems pretty social justicey to moi. Continue reading “Atheism, Social Justice, and Dictionaries”
It goes like this: “I don’t get why people are so obsessed with using all these labels. Why can’t you just be, like, a human being? Aren’t you just creating more division by making up all these categories? Blah blah blah, special snowflake, blah.” (I was going to add more to that, but it kinda sounds like that to me after a while. You get the point.)
Well, to start, it shouldn’t matter to you what language people use to describe themselves. If someone asks you to use certain pronouns or something, respect that. Apart from that, your involvement is not needed.
Here’s the main thing. To quote Anita Sarkeesian: “I know it sounds super basic — Comm Studies 101 – but having the language to name things in the world is really powerful.” Sarkeesian is talking about naming certain tropes in media, but it seemed like a statement which perfectly matches this argument. Continue reading “Defending the use of labels (aka adjectives)”
You heard me. It’s obnoxious. (Not just because of the inherent cissexism/heterosexism.)
If you’re not familiar with what I’m referring to, it’s a relatively common joke that (in a cishet relationship) women take up most of the bed while the dudes are relegated to a small sliver at the edge.
I couldn’t find exactly the one that ignited this train of thought for me, since it was someone else’s random Facebook post from months ago, but here are a couple examples of what I mean:
