So Yeah Here We Are

Again. Still. We could’ve been New Zealand, but people are convinced that basic epidemiology digs up the graves of the Founding Fathers or whatever, so here I am with a blog and a cheeseburger.

And only social distancing prevents me from finding the “well masks cause some people to get light-headed and dizzy what about that?” assholes and kicking them in various squishy places, possibly including their brain. What about that? Well, I’ve been light-headed and dizzy before, it’s way better than your lungs basically eating themselves, if you were a person you’d find it a way better sensation than knowing you caused someone else’s lungs to basically eat themselves, I hate you, I hope you die slowly and without subjecting others to yourself.

I am, perhaps, a tad grumpy. That’s not going to change for a while.

While we’re at it: TERFs, including various YA fantasy authors, can fuck right off, stop being assholes in the name of all cis women, and die. As a cis woman, I find your reduction of my life experience to an annoying bit of my plumbing creepy in a Gileadean kind of way. As a white cis woman, I find YET ANOTHER set of cis guys suddenly discovering that they’re RILLY RILLY CONCERN ABOUT THE FEMINISM when it’s a way to shit on an underprivileged group to be hideous. Fuck off, Commanders Waterford and Serenas Joy. Your actual rationale is pretty obvious as “but Islam is oppressive to women,” which I saw a lot of during my college days almost twenty years ago so way to get any updated arguments, it’s pretty obvious when you’re using it to defend existing police structures, as I talked about last time, and it’s pretty obvious re: trans women.

And per cis women pulling this shit because of trauma, while systemically I’m sorry it happened because it should never have happened, and you don’t deserve it because nobody does…if you’re a bigot, you’re way down on the list of people I feel any sort of sympathy for, regardless of your past. Plenty of vile people were abused. It’s not an excuse or even a mitigating factor–I’ll start feeling bad for you right before I start weeping over Manson or Gacy.

A couple years back, after one of our traditional mass shootings, I was on a blog I then frequented discussing gun control. A pro-NRA dipshit made the argument that well what if she needed a gun so she’d feel safe from rapists? Well, various of us pointed out in various ways, statistics support her being less safe with a gun, and your security blanket can’t and shouldn’t come at the cost of actual people’s lives.

Same here. If you really and truly feel less safe Because Theoretical Penis, in the face of overwhelming statistics that show that this is not the case…too fucking bad. You’re not allowed to demand the entire world conform to your personal phobias. The consideration that the social contract requires where triggers are concerned (and I do think it does) only extends so far as it doesn’t impinge on other people’s ability to live their lives.  For instance, if animal death is a trigger for you, it’s quite reasonable to ask for a warning in media and to ask your friends to avoid the subject, but if you don’t want to watch “Old Yeller,” you shouldn’t go in the theater. Same deal.

(Honestly, if veterans and shooting survivors haven’t banded together to try and outlaw fireworks by now, y’all can sit down and shut up.)

Anyhow, our Supreme Court did a surprise right thing. I am not cranky about that, nor am I cranky about the fundies crying big Jesusy tears over it. There’s some debate, reasonably so, about whether this was a move to distract from refusing to reconsider qualified immunity (which was ass, don’t get me wrong), and I can see either way, but: first of all, if true, that means they thought they needed to distract us, which is a good thing as long as we don’t let it work, and second, a lot of the assholes seem to be genuinely upset about it.

Neither of these things should be enough to make us stop fighting (especially you, fellow white cis people) but that second one alone is enough to make me happy. Like, if you need cheering up this week, turn to the opinion where Alito loses his entire shit in the legalistic equivalent of a sophomore tone poem about Dead Scalia’s Conservative Tears and Supreme Court Pirate Ships and “necking.”

Also, check out this article and the links: https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a32870451/how-to-help-black-trans-lives-donate/