MY BROTHER

This is a Dreamwidth run by a retard named Tim.
I'm also a retard named Tim.
We're like brothers.
Let's see what my wayward brother has done with his entire existence.
Brotherhood is not lessened when one brother is foolish.

Saturday, four days ago, I flew from Vancouver to Minneapolis, spent my layover chatting with my dear friend ADB who had come out to the airport to meet me, and then flew to London on a red-eye. (But not before ending my 31-month streak of never getting either groped or pornoscanned in an airport; there was only one checkpoint open at MSP that Saturday night, with only a scanner option. I had been planning to opt out if that happened, but at the last minute I decided I didn't want a random cis person touching me.

Holy shit
why is every Tim on the internet a complete twat?
Did I drain all of the coolness out of my namesake?
Well I'd be sorry, other Tims, but I feel you'd just be wasting it anyway.

Sunday, I arrived in London feeling like a zombie, since I'd only slept for about four hours on the plane, if that. Plan A had been to go to a coffee shop for a few hours and noodle around pointlessly on the Internet, I mean catch up on work, I mean... In any case, my laptop was almost dead and the power adapter I'd bought at the airport wasn't grounded, which of course I didn't notice when buying it, in my zombified state. So I collected all my belongings and headed down the road to the Superdrug, where I bought another adapter. Nope, that one wasn't grounded either, and so I embarked on a long, long journey to the Apple store in Covent Garden to get the "world traveler kit". 

And he owns an Apple.
And says cis unironically.
I know I said brotherhood isn't lessened when one brother is foolish not five minutes ago but I really feel this man is in no way related to me.
I have no biological siblings, in fact, so this wouldn't be news for me.
No any other kind of sibling either.

I've got a new blog post up at geekfeminism.org about structureless organizations and whether or not they are good for people experiencing marginalization in the tech industry. You can also read my past posts on geekfeminism.org.

Bro come on
writing for geekfeminism
that's a website?
You can write
for geekfeminism
Geek
feminism
feminism
+ geek
= get out immediately before I call the police.
My brief stint for writing for other websites included writing for another blog about how shit video games are.
Then it shut down before they paid me my money.
This fruit cup works for Mozilla.
I didn't know Firefox didn't have to check its cis privilege but apparently it doesn't.

I succeeded at moving to Vancouver! A bit of culture shock. (Feel free to come up with a joke about moving out of a mutable reference or something.)

I'll be sure to think of a joke once I figure out what the fuck that means.

Over on Twitter, I wrote: 'Cis people have sexes, trans people have "gender identities"! Men are from Mars, women are from Venus!'

And a friend who is cis asked, in response, 'Suggestions for (gently?) correcting cis people who're under the impression that "gender identity" is what trans people prefer?'

HELP ME FEMINISM WHAT DO I DO

One thing that I, and many other trans people say, is that if you're cis, and care about trans people, you should call out cissexism when you hear it: for example, if someone in your presence uses the t----- word (and is not a CAMAB trans person), or makes a joke whose humor is contingent on it being ridiculous or pathetic for CAMAB people to wear or do anything coded as feminine, you should inform them of your displeasure. 

Your rights end where my feelings begin.
MUH FREEDOMS

There is no need to do so diplomatically or politely unless you think that is the most effective way to send a message to the offender, and anyone else present, that this behavior isn't acceptable. Rules don't have to be polite -- stop signs don't say "stop, please". As an ally to trans people, you assert a boundary when you say "it's not okay for you to use slurs around me." And there is no need to be particularly nice in stating that boundary.

Fuck you, buddy.
I'll say whatever I goddamn well please and if you snowflakes don't like it you can fuck right off.

To me, though, use of the term "gender identity" -- which is, in my opinion, almost always part of a stealth tactic to invalidate trans people's self-affirmed sexes and elevate cis people's identities to the status of "biological" -- 

My sex is biological.
I was born with a big swinging dick and roguishly masculine good looks.
Nothing I think about myself will alter this glorious reality.

First and foremost, some trans people do prefer the "gender identity" terminology; some trans people do say things like "my biological sex is female, but my gender identity is male". It makes me cringe to hear that, and when I feel like I can, I'll try to let people know that there are other ways of talking about our lives that are more honest and accurate.

I've been putting a lot of thought into this lately.
So if it's all in your head--
all this shit--
and as we all know in my head I'm a space marine--
what else counts as reality despite being just in my head?
Like in real life I'm a single guy but in my head I'm banging all 9 members of Girls' Generation.
Transrelationship.
Yeah that's right.
All 9 of them.
At the same fucking time.
Check your fucking privilege cisrelationship scum.

But it's not a cis person's place to have that conversation with a trans person, and likewise, it's also not a cis person's place to claim they know what set of terminology is right for all trans people.

Especially that one that dyes her hair blonde.
I'd give her a spanking for that shit.
The High Lord Zeus has given you flowing, silky black hair.
Why you gotta dyeing it blonde like that?

Here's what I suggest you do instead if you want to call out terms like "gender identity", and you're either cis, or being seen as cis: shift the focus to cisness, instead of transness. For example, you could ask: "Do you have a gender? Or do you have a gender identity? Do you feel you know what your sex is? If so, how would you feel if someone else told you they know what your sex is, and the sex you know you are is just a 'gender identity'?"

I dunno about this but I'm banging all 9 members of Girls' Generation in spirit.

Even using the terms "cis" or "cissexual" bothers some people because they would just rather be called "normal"; if "cis" and trans" are adjectives of equal status, neither one marked as the "default" state, then it's almost as if being cis isn't any better than being trans.

What would Aurelius think of this bullshit?
I don't know if he'd even know what the fuck.
I'm not sure I'd want to subject a guy fresh from the year 170 to this.
You have like 2000 years of history to catch up on so here's a horseless chariot, a magic slate and a giant bird made out of metal and it's all downhill after that.

By getting cis people to understand that they are cis, that the way they relate to their body and to the labels they were coercively assigned at birth are not universal but are simply their subjective experiences (no better or more real than anyone else's subjective experiences), you can encourage other people cis people to step off the pedestal, and relate to trans people as equals rather than superiors.

What the fuck are you talking about?
I literally haven't read a single word of this until just now.
I'm not even sure what I'm talking about anymore.

If you can name yourself as "cis", that's one step towards realizing that trans people are not flawed versions of yourself, but rather, people who are different from yourself, just as you are different from us.

My favorite member of Girls' Generation changes pretty much every week.
Right now I'm big into that one that speaks English.

In my opinion, "gender identity" serves a similar function to language that marks "trans" but leaves cisness unmarked. The language of "biological sex", being "born a man" or "born a woman" (which sounds painful for the individual giving birth), "chromosomes", and so on, all sound scientific, but in this case they're serving a decidedly political function: to lend legitimacy to the idea that people whose sex is different from the sex they were coercively assigned at birth do not exist.

MUH CHROMOSOMES.
Apparently this person was born a woman and became a man.
I dunno.

I've mentioned obliquely that I've been dealing with some money issues this past year. I'm paying off a large amount of debt for health care (both emergency and planned care). Though I've been covered by health insurance the entire time, because as a trans person, I'm considered a second-class citizen, my insurers can arbitrarily decide not to cover my care. So a third of my net paycheck every month goes to paying off those debt. I'm about to move to a place without indoor plumbing just so I can pay back that debt faster and waste less money on interest.

Where the fuck do you live?
Saudi Arabia?
No indoor plumbing, what?

I donated to TAI because I benefit from sexism, and I donated to TAI because I benefit from having a more inclusive and more egalitarian work environment. Paradoxical? Not if you're familiar with intersectionality. Because I'm male, and have conditional cis privilege (that is, it's rare for people to question or invalidate my sex and gender unless I choose to mention that I have a transsexual body), unearned privilege accrues to me that makes my life and, particularly, my career easier.

Muh privilege

The other side of it is that I'm a queer man and a trans man, and a man who's not comfortable being in environments that subordinate women. I find homogeneous groups to be toxic. While TAI doesn't focus specifically on addressing homophobia and transphobia in open-source, what makes the environment safer for women is frequently also what makes the environment safer for queer men, trans men, and non-binary-identified people as well. The same kinds of "humor", "jokes", and political comments that get used to mark a space as unsafe for women are also used to marginalize those who are seen as men who aren't doing masculinity well enough: queer men.

Actual programming?
Irrelevant.
As long as we're PC about this shit.

Maybe people who can keep all that state in their heads are better programmers, I don't know. But when it's just in someone's head, it's not available to someone else who might want to work on the project. A friend wrote recently about the ways in which lack of documentation excludes new contributors from open-source projects, particularly new contributors who have plenty of ability but aren't comfortable joining an often-frat-boyish IRC channel to get documentation. Some people need documentation more than others, depending on their social placement.

"depending on their social placement"
there you have it: women need more help than men.
I feel like this asshole is very verbose, too. Rereading my post I am quoting huge blocks of text just to get the semblance of a point.
Have you ever heard of editing?

But reading the code often brings up an intolerable amount of performance anxiety for me. I can't understand it because my brain is going "you ought to be able to understand this better". Comments would help because it would remind me that the person who wrote this isn't omnipotent, and had to think hard about it in order to get it right. That they went through a process in order to create it, and the product didn't suddenly spring fully formed from their brain.

The point of a program isn't to function.
The point of a program is to make me feel better about myself when I figured out how it worked.
Hey if you want to do a good job maybe figure out why the latest version of Steam is causing Skyrim to throw up runtime errors.
Maybe figure that out and we'll talk about muh privilege.

I'm in need of both some advice, and some help. I'm currently living in downtown San Jose in an apartment that I'm paying $1600/month for. I like my apartment a lot, but the rent is (too damn) high, and I'm in a situation where I have so much medical debt (thanks to being a second-class citizen!) that I have to pay off to the tune of around $2000/month that I have very little money left for any expenses after all that is paid. It's not a sustainable situation, since I keep going over budget.

Second class citizen raking in three times what I make.
I guess that makes me about a sixth class citizen.
Oh right but I forgot I have cis privilege and all that fictional crap.

When asking people -- especially geeks -- to use less ableist language, "intelligent" tends to be a sticking point. It's one thing to accept that r----- and even i---- are words that stigmatize people with intellectual disabilities when used as insults, much as calling an ugly sweater "gay" stigmatizes queer people. But geek culture is centered around the valorization of intelligence. It seems even harder to stop using "intelligent" as a compliment than it is to use "stupid" as an insult (and let me be clear that I'm still working on doing both in my vocabulary).

I have two new vocab words for you that I want you to start applying immediately.
"Fuck"
and "off".
Here are some words that you could use to describe a person, instead of "intelligent":

• curious
• hardworking
• well-read
• knowledgeable
• thoughtful
• open-minded
• creative
• attentive to detail
• analytical
• careful
• collaborative
• empathetic
• articulate
• good at listening

I'm an English teacher and based on my extensive qualifications I can tell you none of these are synonymous with intelligent.
None of them are even near synonyms. These are unrelated qualities one would believe an intelligent person might possess.
I can tell you that the assumptions you make about intelligence based on what you think is synonymous with intelligence is pretty breath taking.
1. You don't have to be curious to be smart.
2. I was born intelligent. Fortunately my (sometimes) laziness hasn't dampened this.
3. Your book learning has nothing to do with your overall intellect. Plenty of people are intelligent an uneducated. Just like there are many idiots (yourself) who are educated but not intelligent.
4. See above.
5. Insight, again, is a mark of intelligence but there are plenty of people who are thoughtful about simple tasks.
6. Unrelated to intelligence. Whether you are open-minded or closed-minded says nothing of your capacity for reason. There are many reasons to be closed-minded on a topic. Closed-mindedness is not an outright insult. I doubt many people are open-minded about pedophilia, for instance.
7. Plenty of people are intelligent while being totally uncreative.
8. As someone who is not always attentive to detail I can tell you once again this is no indication of intelligence.
9. Again, analysis is a skill intelligent people possess typically. Having this skill does not make you intelligent.
10. Now you're just getting silly. Carefulness? Really?
I could keep going and do all these but I think I've made my point.
Look at how many times I've just had to outright refute your word choice because these words mean entirely different things.

Of course, these words don't all mean the same thing,

More importantly, 1984, none of these words have even a close meaning to the original word.
Words aren't just some putty you can use to create whatever meaning you want. Words have a set definition that might change over time but you can't just decide that "good at listening" means the same as "intelligent".
What if you're intelligent and not good at listening?
Is that person branded stupid?
Meaning comes from how you arrange the words into thoughts. Doing this bullshit makes language less concise and clear and just makes it more difficult for everyone else.

This should be a sign that "intelligent" is a vague word. So why not use a more precise one?

"Leonardo da Vinci was a genius" vis a vis "Leonardo da Vinci was articulate."
SEE HOW THESE HAVE TWO ENTIRELY SEPARATE MEANINGS?

One thing these words have in common is that unlike "intelligent", they don't suggest an innate quality that a person is born with that can never be added to or subtracted from. A person who is not well-read (for example, a baby) can become well-read, given enough time.

I was born intelligent.
I'm not about to apologize for it. That is the way it is.
Fuck it it's time for bed but I'd keep reading this bullshit.
Maybe Friday?