It’s less about giving money to the woman herself and more about how HP and JK Rowling are used as memetic weapons. Every release of a new property has seen a rush of transphobic actors invading trans spaces for years. Invoking the name of the author and showing solidarity in a lot of contexts is a not subtle way of showing support to the veiws expressed by the Terf ideology during a time when being trans is becoming criminalized in more places. The news isn’t generally covering it well but Texas is passing laws where it is a criminal offense to misrepresent your birth sex at work or in public government spaces.

“Oh but it’s just money” isn’t so much the problem. It’s the cover this entire conversation about ethical consumption or the lack thereof in daily life is providing to people throwing up open flags of anti-trans bigotry in public and using that as a tool to band together to attack the community and send open messages that trans people are not welcome in ways that the average cis person will dismiss as just “they like kid wizards”.

It isn’t for “no real effect”. Harry Potter is a merchandise empire and it’s important to see how that empire is being utilized. Open fan support of Harry Potter is often used as a direct open signal of anti-trans support and Terf ideology. Here in Vancouver where we have a larger than average population of trans and non-binary folk and more open accommodation to the community a billboard was put up saying “I❤️ JK Rowling” downtown because it’s a more nebulous dogwhistle that wouldn’t immediately ping Canada’s hate speech laws so that the whole “Freedom of Speech” ploy could be envoked.

Whenever a new HP franchise item comes out there’s a wave of people who flood online and sometimes in person trans spaces who use the barest veneer of support of the franchise as a means to say some truely awful things about trans people. Some don’t even bother mentioning the franchise they just participate in the storming because they have the opportunity. Those spaces are often filled with vulnerable people seeking support and solidarity and these rushes can leave isolated trans people without community for weeks.

Here in Van someone wearing HP merch in any queer space is throwing up a flag that says “I am potentially an unsafe person.”

Article of the billboard.

http://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.5722244

You don’t have to give up your books. All we ask is that people do not white knight the author or the publication and merchandising empire which keeps making her influence into an active memetic weapon.

I don’t find you terribly respectable I’m afraid. Your self improvement narrative in regards to vaccines with the “I go to the gym and wash my vegetables” is enacting something ultimately dark that goes beyond simply trying to be understood. I wish you would stop but at this point I am very certain you won’t. Good luck.

Because I don’t think one hops around a topic replying to a multitude of strangers with fairly combative short little posts that convey a sense of being personally attacked if they have a solid understanding of this principle?

Because there’s only three ways people respond to an argument based out of ‘everyman for themselves’ logic. The most common is to respond with a “well fuck you too” attitude and the second is to double down on their belief that that’s not a good principle. I wonder why one would open themselves up to that and behave like it’s compelling if you’re already aware? The juice doesn’t seem worth the squeeze.

The point I am making is that you are doing two things here. The first shows a fear for your personal safety and represents a very understandable reluctance. People usually get that part. It represents a non-ideal outcome but people are generally fairly willing to write it off.

However when people come on here and posting the way you are trying to advocate for your position to be one of unchallenged normalcy it is trying to achieve a totally separate second task. You are trying to reinforce an oppossing social pressure in direct opposition to the goals of others with the intention of group safety. You are either not being honest with yourself or not being honest with us about your intentions are but that doesn’t really matter because regardless you’re going from being a smaller problem for people to one that is standing directly in their path.

A lot of the time this second task isn’t elucidated properly because you framed this as an argument about how best to achieve your personal safety which is a fundamentally different arguement… But people arguing against you often are approaching you from this second task because you are not arguing effectively for personal safety when your actions and stated desiref outcome don’t align.

You are effectively arguing for lower general safety by fighting against the social pressures that are in service of raising the bar of protections. That is in direct opposition to your goals and theirs. Why would the misconception about a fear of needles matter when it doesn’t change your modis operandi and you statedly do not care? Why is lying the lesser evil then being selfish?

Would it clear some things up if people just said “We don’t particularly care about your fear of vaccine injury. Our pushback is actively trying to engineer society to protect a wider swath of the human population and your fears aren’t relevant to that aim but the repetition and specific means of open expression of those fears as being something worthy of respect is in direct conflict”?

Not sure I buy it. This honesty comes across as wanting to have your cake and eat it too. If it were pure selfishness at play your ace move would be to encourage others to utilize vaccines so that your personal risk is minimized by upping the social pressure to get vaccines… and then just quietly not take them yourself. As someone who thinks it’s moral to protect people who are immunocompromised and cannot protect themselves except through joint Immunity projects it benefits my aims and the people I know who live their lives under increased risks they can’t personally mitigate to increase the social pressures to take vaccines.

Our goals should align here because as long as the social pressure remains hightened both aims benefit. Your statistical best chance of achieving your stated aim is to just lie or stay mum.

But that’s not what you’re doing and if you were really inoculated against social pressures than the increased social pressure of just quietly not conforming wouldn’t effect you negatively. You are effectively platforming your veiw that there should be less social pressure because you ultimately are effected by that social pressure and you want people’s tacit endorsement that what you are doing is okay. This isn’t ultimately about vaccines for you. It’s about how you’re personally made to feel about it and that isn’t terribly compelling in the face of altruistic endeavours.

The anecdote about the loud apartment music is something of an unnecessary red herring and a somewhat confusing one. I get that your premise is that people are horrible so you should be horrible too but is that really the answer? Those people were acting selfishly but if they were corrected by increasing the social pressure to stop by the residents around them making a fuss or by a culture that reinforces that considering the needs of people in your vicinity more highly is a common good you wouldn’t have suffered for their selfishness. Your way doesn’t see an actual reduction in the occurrence of the problem. It endorses more problems that are left to fester.

I understand where you come from even if I think we do have a responsibility to create Immunity through lowering transmission rates. It isn’t exactly noble but you have the self awareness to note that. Still the vehemence displayed towards vaccines doesn’t support your outcome.

Everyone who gets a vaccine effectively supports your health for you as it makes it less likely that it will spread to you who is unprotected. Many things vaccines are made to protect against have fairly bad long term effects on health. It doesn’t matter how well you personally take care of yourself polio permanently robs you of your stamina, measles robs you of the ability to fight off other diseases, flu can develop into long term pulmonary conditions and some viruses cause lifelong neurological problems. Getting any of those is entirely possible and just a matter of random chance.

I understand wanting to go through life essentially cheating the process by not having to experience any negative effects from disease or vaccine but it is essentially a lottery. Long term vaccine injury is a thing but the odds are very small. Those injury rates and the type of injury however are usually still less than the effects of getting hit by the diseases themselves and the rates associated with suffering the long term effects of one. However here’s where I become a little confused at why you’re advocating for normalizing your attitude : the more people who take the reasonable risk of vaccine injury the less diseases are able to transmit the less likely you personally are to encountering a debilitating and life threatening illness. If more people stop taking the vaccines your statistical outcome of getting through life unscathed goes dramatically down… So if selfish motives are at the core of your vaccine hesitancy why are you so vocal about your choice? Wouldn’t it personally benefit you to encourage other people to take that risk on your behalf?

Oookay, you’re trying to pick a fight but not exactly landing an interesting hook. This entire sentiment is pretty empty if the best you have is to heckle my spelling. Are you new to trolling? I feel like maybe you should read a tutorial or something.

Come on mate, gimme substance! Refute the argument with something other than just “nu uh!”

I understand it being a sticky issue for people because there’s so much of society and choice we put into the realm of adults. But here’s the thing. Psychology has been obsessed with trans people since the origin of the field. We have a ton of data on what happens when trans people recognized at an early age grow up and what that looks like when there’s no intervention whatsoever. The reality of it is that there’s certain things that there is no medical fix or take backs for once you experience your first puberty.

We know very well that gender identity observed in trans kids is stable. We have a rubric of diagnosis stable enough to have gone up against several National medical ethics boards and survived the scrutiny nessisary to opt for attempting risks.

The first generation of kids to grow up utilizing this process are now adults (the oldest cohort are now in their 30’s) and the results have been promising with an almost absurdly low rate of regret reported across the population…

But now you have to recognize why that rate of regret is so low. You need the signoff of a team of professionals who put the bar very high to allow candidates to attempt these risks and any of them can pull support if something doesn’t go to plan. Furthermore a child alone does not make these decisions the informed consent has to be demonstrated by the child and their parents. So when people say “kids shouldn’t make these decisions” you’re missing that they aren’t making these decisions. A kid and a panel of adults who are experts in their field, social workers and dedicated parents who have watched the difference in their child’s behaviour go from very obviously not thriving in a multitude of ways to massive improvements through social transition make these decisions.

People act like it’s as simple as a kid showing up and asking for a lollipop. It isn’t. We have literal generations of data about what happens if we do nothing. The outcomes are miserable. We can afford to try something different than known miserable outcomes.

It is probably the case that if your friends do veiw you as a friend and aren’t made aware that this isn’t because of something they did but a way you are then this behaviour is likely hurting them to some degree or another. Your discription of how you interfsce with friends is fairly consistent with cluster B personality disorders but that doesn’t mean it’s automatically bad. It does mean that if you want to become a safe person to associate socially with you are going to need to put in more work than average to learn what other people generally need out of relationships and to recognize pain that is going to be difficult to empathize with… And if you decide to become a safe person it will mean being more open with your friends about parts of the human experience that are assumed but in your case not shared.

Most people have needs out of friendships that if they are not met and they cannot identify why they are not met they can sort of look inwards and self emotionally mutilate, picking themselves apart to find what it wrong with themselves to warrant cold behaviour. People’s first instinct is to ask “what about me makes me undeserving.” and are very good at populating a list.

Guilt and shame for most of us is the fastest emotional response. It is way faster than reason. People who think they may have wronged you or are being rejected by you will feel guilty first and then have to pick the emotion apart to figure out if they should actually feel guilt or shame… and then even if they realize they did nothing wrong might still feel guilt or rejection. A lot of being a safe person regardless of whether one has disordered emotional issues or not involves making sure they have the tools to not feel guilt, shame or rejection for very long. The faster they can rationalize and compartmentalize what is happening isn’t about them it is about you the more likely it is to not stick and develop into a longer term emotional injury or weakness. Once someone has been put in a position to effectively bully themselves that creates possible long term damage. A lot of the time, particularly for young people first experiencing this who have not learned how to be safe around people with cluster B disorders the outcome resolves as long term anger towards the person who made them question themselves.

If your friends are growing apart it may be because they already think you do not care about them and have already gone through this self bullying process but have now started to trade notes to see if they are the problem or not. If they reach a mutual concensus about you being emotionally unrecipricative then they might withdraw to avoid being hurt further. A sense of being valued in some form is a nessisary portion of friendship for most people. They will project that assumption of being valued and emotionally cared for onto you by default if you act like a friend because that is something they do when they act that way and even if they logically know it isn’t reciprocated they might not give up on you if you show effort to keep them in your life. Someone who acts like a friend but never did show signs of caring is more often than not going to be falsely attributed as once caring but withdrawing that care for a reason, which is in some relationship circumstances is inflicted as a punishment. So even if it’s not your intention people might interpret your behaviour not as rude but as a deliberate act of cruelty.

If you want them to stick around then letting them know that you like the experience of them as people in some way is key. Like if you find them more entertaining than most or recognize their good qualities then letting them know is what is going to keep them around.

What nobody tells you is that people before the age of 25 tend to make closer relationships where they emotionally risk more and become closer faster. Generally speaking it is more difficult to make as dedicated friends as an older adult as people are less likely to latch and a lot of people when they fail to make these types of high risk close friendships later in life interpret themselves as deficient as a person. You are in the prime age of emotionally high risk but high reward friendships. That does mean that the way these friendships resolve might become formative to the people around you as you might be one of the first non-safe relationships they have as they have not built adequate defenses. Wounds suffered in youth have an outsized effect and if things go particularly south without adequate explanation they may particularly remember you long term as a source of personal anguish.

Remember this, vulnerability is a bonding behaviour, your vulnerability just works a lot different than other people’s. People might reject you if they can’t figure out how to interface with your type of vulnerability but some will genuinely recognize it as you risking something because you ultimately value them not being hurt over their usefulness and function in your life. There are a lot of people out there with empathy above and beyond the median… But I would recommend therapy for lessons on how to navigate relationships in a non-standard way.

It is even wilder when one considers how challenging the Canadian Healthcare System actually is to run. They are on the hook to provide every citizen duty of care over a landmass 1.6% larger than the entire US. It regularly employs helicopter ambulances for access to remote communities and has exceedingly challenging terrain and despite this Canada has lower infant mortality, maternal mortality and longer life expectancy outcomes. On the Numbeo Health Care index which ranks quality of care, doctors and facilities it outpaces the US on that metric too. The Government run Medical Services Plan also covers partial on things like Massage Therapy visits, physio appointments and various services covering based on income so more people have access to those services at affordable prices.

It does all of this on an income tax base that charges 4% less than that of the US. It’s a monumental effort keeping it afloat. The amount paid to insurers in the US, not even the system just insurance is just mind-boggling from a Canadian perspective.

… But you still charge everybody into debt bondage for saving their lives. Here I do not pay for health insurance and have never walked out of the ER with a bill. I legitimately fear my American friends getting hurt in a way that simply does not apply to my domestic friends because I know that their lives won’t be impacted financially long term. From what I have gathered from information about their wait times for surgery there isn’t that much difference except for joint and mobility related stuff and even then it’s not that far off.

The fact that employers are allowed to control what healthcare you receive and coerce you into staying with them or else you enter a dicey period where you have to cover you or your family yourself in any way just seems fucking exploitative and bonkers from a Canadian perspective.

It may seem like a pedantic difference but you are missing a key part of what’s going on here. Nobody is challenging that gender dysphoria is a bad thing to experience… This policy is saying it’s kosher to proclaim “transness is a mental illness” which means in effect that encompasses gender euphoria and all expressions of gender incongruity as symptoms of a mental illness. It’s a subtle linguistic difference but one makes it possible to publicly derride trans people as being delusional or harmful to people around them or dangers to themselves and push for “curing” all transness by approaching being trans as a failure state.

While I realize that hard boundry setting is the new norm sometimes harm reduction is a better strategy. While a lot of folk have religious trauma to deal with that makes them want to do exactly zero church stuff one aspect of not believing in God is that a lot of the ritual aspects are pretty low stakes once one you strip away the mysticism. One way to handle the worry of your Mom wanting to do something dangerous to essentially just splash water on your kid is to participate in the silly ritual safely so that it’s done with minimum risk.

There definitely are hills to die on but if you give an order you know won’t be obeyed because the stakes from your Mother’s perspective are incredibly high then one way to look at it is baby’s safety comes first. Not because of the possible existence of the soul but because risking kidnapping to perform at end of day a boring nothing ceremony that ultimately means nothing isn’t a good idea. If it is distasteful to participate because of trauma then recognizing that you can deputize somebody you trust to get the hurdle over with is an option but realistically, your kid will never gain that same trauma from this. They will grow up with a completely different belief system as their basic. If them simply being baptized is a personal trigger it is wise to unpack exactly why because whether they are or not isn’t something your kid is likely going to care about. Having grown up in an agnostic environment and having a number of friends in the same situation some of us were baptized for the sake of family peace but for everyone I know it’s a complete non-event. One advantage of these things actually meaning nothing is that there is no change of state. A baptized baby and a non baptized baby are the same.

To my crew anyway a lot of us our parents aversion or reactions to church stuff seems out of proportion due to them having a history. Theirs is a more volitile strongly opinionated atheism as opposed to the more passive naturalized one we developed because we do not feel betrayed by belief. Sometimes their aversion causes them to do things which from the outside display that they are still letting their rejection of religious upbringing effect their judgment in an outsized way because they didn’t ever really heal.

The entitlement of the average right winger really is something to behold.

I don’t highly enforce my pronouns. Not because it doesn’t effect me but because being labeled a troublemaker who is hard to get along with is a career limiting move… And some interactions are so limited that it’s not worth creating social awkwardness to self advocate. Days where this happens a lot make me depressed, grumpy and eats into the energy I have reserved to enjoy my leisure time.

Which is why it is so frustrating that some people demand that calling me by my dead name or refer openly to my sex using pronouns I hate is completely consequenceless that even when I tell them the only reprocussion to them is that I will not like being around very much them they get angry. Like I am cheating them of being owed that I automatically enjoy their company.

They are so bloody sensitive that the consequence of me thinking they are kind of shit to be around is somehow a tyranny. I just wanna yell at them like dude… You keep bringing attention to the physical body that represents my least favorite aspects of existing by mentioning directly in conversation because that’s what words like “she”, “her”, “girl” and “woman” mean to you. You might as well be openly talking about my fucking genetalia because that is your only qualifier for using those words. You are reflecting the things I didn’t like about about the experience of myself back at me. If I openly referenced your least favorite physical trait every time casually in conversation how much would you enjoy being around me?