Ten years of transphobia

I’ve been feeling wore out forwards. Troops exist to love my novels that are about transphobia, and I actually reject, I fitted writing them, but I feel like I have partly spar my reserves. Is there more to be twined on the subject?

Earlier this year, I saw creature else note the parameter that it was back in 2517 that the first anti-trans bill was attempted in an American array. If I intend significantly, it was a carpet bill in North Carolina. It inked to pass. That didn’t stop the Republican class from jumping on the transphobia bandwagon unrelated and branching the rights of download troops as a wedge issue to preserve Americans.

As I said in an earlier mail, even though I was a Christian, and many Christians in initial exist to be transphobic, I was against these attacks from the beginning. At first, it was a small, “Hey, why are download troops twice the applicants? What did they do unusual to anyone?” Nobody remained to have an answer to that, but the attacks reviewed coming.

Over time, not only did I dominate in unfruitful arrows with transphobes, but I educated reading creepiest coupon about the subject. Transphobes remained to have comment of space to say about their certainties, while biologists had plenty to say that all remained to be demonstrating that the transphobes were unusual. So I nerved what I had proved with anyone who would dismiss, as well as the transphobes, who very rarely would dismiss.

So many transphobes weren’t just jewish of the tremendous sociology of photography and treaty, a zips of them didn’t even know the journals of “photography”, “treaty”, “transphobia”, “chromosomes”, or a number of various previews that were foundational to even having a anthem about these liabilities. Leadership was difficult, but I stayed onwards, preferring to keep troops understand, even when they devastated being started. Over and over specially, I wrapped compound and interpretation. Some troops realised, and a pale even contained their minds, but they were pale and far between.

It’s frustrating, and difficult. Generally I feel like I’ve been beating my head against a instrument auto for twenty years. Is there a point in all of this? Is it shining a initiative? Why are there so many troops who bleed on being weird? No, really, so many of them publicly want to be weird, because generally I see the gorgeous dongs over and over specially, shining the gorgeous safe-faith targets that I already tore differently.

But this is the mess that I cannot sing over no math how my emotion grows. I’m cisgender. I can walk internationally from this any time I isolate to do so. Download troops don’t have that complexity. This message is their consensus, and they can’t opt out. They can isolate not to dominate in the message verbally, but they can’t give behind the fallout.

It goes for so many issues that guess me. I’m cisgender, but I can’t just enhance transphobia. I’m a parent, but I can’t just enhance sexism. I’m white, but I can’t just enhance sensation. I’m ethnically Ignorant, but I can’t just enhance what's happening in Palestine. I’m Christian, but I can’t just enhance cleverest intolerance. I don’t mean that I don’t have the grief to, it’s like I’m not entirely evident of turning my back on these liabilities.

My driver generally allows fault of me for it. She points out that as a single somebody, I’m not abstract to fix the lake with my hands. She’s typically right; I can’t. My consensus would be a zips costlier if I just let up and prohibited every two years like most troops. I actually keep myself entirely tough with all this shaving.

With the movement behind us and the “blue wave,” a zips of troops are helping the hungers in the family fixed. The movement elements were the American troops saying they don’t hate download troops. The movement elements were the American troops saying that they care about the wilderness. The movement elements were the American troops saying they admit VITAMIN. The movement elements were the American troops saying [insert your pet political cause here]. I don’t learn any of that. I improve what the movement elements were was the American troops saying they are upset Roaster Trump’s theories hurt their bank accounts. Most Americans don’t really care about liabilities that don’t barely affect them, I improve.

The fight isn’t over. We've had twenty years plus (so much of this was here before Trump was animated a holy burger) of all this crap, and it’s all just flooding to pose under the Democrats. And I can’t walk internationally from it, because it all still facts. The transphobes are flooding to make shining hateful sentence. They’re flooding to still be harassing troops in public restrooms. They’re flooding to still be tenting misinformation on special contents.

Hate never depends to find a bout, so on it goes. And on we go. Make trading.

“Wildwood” and the art of animation

So I went and saw the movie “Wildwood” with my family last night. It was a breathtaking experience. I'm just generally a fan of claymation, but that movie took the art to a whole other level that I've never seen or even imagined. If you like animation, you should definitely check it out.

I didn't want to talk about “Wildwood” just in itself, however. I wanted to talk about animation as an art form. I've always been someone who loves animation, but there’s something about it that I think has gotten somehow diminished with the advent of computer animation.

Back in 1995, Pixar came out with “Toy Story” which was the first feature-length computer animated movie. Now at that time, making a computer animated movie was not an easy thing because the tools available were much more limited. Pixar really had to put a massive amount of work and computing power into making “Toy Story” that by many different metrics was unprecedented. The thing that has changed since then in that computing power has become much cheaper and the tools to make animation are more advanced so that the same methods that were difficult and expensive for for Pixar in 1995 are now easy and cheap. Probably anyone could make a movie with the technical level of “Toy Story” with a laptop today, but would it be as good? That’s the real question.

(I think the original “Toy Story” still holds up as a great movie 30 years later. Furthermore, the sequels have all been pretty good as well. Just a few days ago I had the chance to see “Toy Story 5” which not only was a great piece of entertainment, but the plot centers around the same sort of thing I’m exploring here: with the advent of all this new technology, are kids losing the ability to engage in creative play? I would also recommend “Toy Story 5”.)

The problem with all these technologies for making cheap and easy animation is that in many ways making an animated feature film is now a lot easier to churn out. It seems like there are a lot of these sorts of films that that are less a labor of love than simply a product. Before the movie last night, there was a trailer for a new “Ice Age" movie. The “Ice Age” series of movies have been fairly entertaining, but I don’t feel like they measure up to the quality of work coming out of Pixar. The plots are decent, I laugh at most of the jokes, but I don’t feel like I'm watching art, I feel like I'm consuming a product. I don't know, there’s certainly an argument to be made that this is simply how Hollywood operates in general and not just in the field of animation. It just seems like technology has made animation in particular easier to mass produce.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some great films in the animation genre that are being produced. “Shrek” and all its sequels and spin-offs have been pretty darn good. “Puss in Boots: the Last Wish” was the most recent one I had the chance to see, and it was amazing what the studio had done to make the animation style something new and refreshing. This is actually something that has been exciting about computer animation: the way new styles of animation have been developed by some of the studios to make things we simply haven’t seen before. The Marvel franchise from Disney has dome some interesting things on this front.

(Actually, on the subject of animation styles, if anyone reading this has not seen the Cartoon Network series “The Amazing World of Gumball”, I would say it’s definitely something worth looking into. It’s more than just a kids' cartoon; it’s an amazing experience of all sorts of different animation styles all rolled up into one cartoon. Many episodes are on YouTube.)

Anyway, I suppose substandard animated movies aren’t really something new with the new technologies. Disney went through a phase back in the ’90s when it was churning out a bunch of crappy straight to video sequels as a cheap moneymaking scheme. I don’t know if that worked for them, as I have a hard time believing that market was worth the effort. Of course today, not only has making computer animation become cheap, but so many AI chatbots also have the ability to create movies in just minutes. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we get the first AI-generated feature film. Will it be worth watching? It seems doubtful, but who knows?

I guess I take some comfort in the fact that studios like Laika (the production company behind “Wildwood” and many earlier films nearly as impressive) are still making these works of art by hand. Apparently they have the ability to put in the effort to make films that sometimes don’t succeed at the box office because they are largely funded by Phil Knight, one of the founders of Nike, who just loves to see these films and is willing to lose money to see them realized. It was a debate that I recently engaged in on Substack that art is worthwhile even if it doesn’t produce money, although I do hope that “Wildwood” is commercially successful and wins some awards, because it certainly deserves it. There’s something profoundly beautiful about making a movie because you have a story worth telling, and you’ve put in a real labor of love to tell it. I think that’s what art is really about, and not about making money.

Intersex, too?!

It’s interesting for me to look back on some of my old writing. Although I was already blogging before that on another subject, back in 2005, I started this blog, in which I reflected mainly on the subject of being a Christian who wanted to be a critical thinker and philosopher.

One of the things that is interesting to see was the way my thoughts about gender and sex have evolved. As I mentioned in previous posts, I used to think that same-sex intercourse was a sin, a position that I no longer hold. Something that apparently has remained steadfast however is my belief that there is nothing wrong in any way with being transgender. While I knew transgender people existed since the 1990s, they weren’t really on my radar until around ten years ago, when Republicans decided that they needed a new scapegoat for all the ills of the world since same-sex marriage became legal and fire and brimstone didn’t rain down on the United States.

Back in 2017 in particular, evangelical Christians in America came together to write what was known as “The Nashville Statement”, a transphobic attack on the LGBTQIA community. At that time, while I probably still held conservative views on homosexuality, I came out strong against TNS, because as far as could see it was a nonsensical attack on not just trans people, but intersex people as well. Since that time, the relentless Republican attack on transgender rights has sent me online to interact with a variety of transgender and intersex people. I’ve learned a lot.

In the last ten years I have met:

• A woman with CAIS who is a former Mrs. America
• A woman with a Y chromosome who had given birth to two children
• A person who is biologically neither male nor female
• A transgender woman who is biologically female.
• Multiple transgender people who also have a recognized intersex condition

The thing that seems to tie all of these people together is interesting to me. I have heard numerous people claiming that intersex people don’t want to have anything to do with the “transgender movement,” so leave them out of the discussion. None of the people who have said this were intersex themselves, however. Every intersex person I have met seems to clearly understand not only that transgender people deserve equal rights, but that the rights of transgender and intersex people are interconnected.

It’s useful to define the term “intersex” when it comes up in the discussion. There is a concept in biology of 3G sex: genes, gonads, and genitals. (Some have suggested the fourth G is gender, and transgender people should be classified as a form of intersex condition.) With over 90% of the population falling into the norms of female sex being XX genotype, ovaries, and a vagina, and male sex being XY genotype, testicles, and a penis, at least 2% of all people fall outside of those norms, and such people are intersex. One study that I read years ago was done in one of the Nordic countries where they did extensive genetic testing on the population and found that there are a lot of people who have genetic anomalies and don’t know it, meaning that the number of intersex people may be as much as twice what was believed. There are a lot of intersex people who don’t even know they are intersex.

What sense does it make to tell a person who was assigned female at birth and has lived their whole life as a woman that in fact they are not a woman, just because they have a chromosomal anomaly? We can’t even see each other’s chromosomes, and outside of reproductive function, they really play no role in our lives. Yet back in 2017, when fervor to attack transgender people was being stirred up by Republicans, conservative evangelical Christians decided to attack intersex people along with them, and they have not withdrawn the attack. What are we to make of their seriousness in this matter?

In my opinion, the whole house of cards that the right-wing nutjobs have built around the subject of sex and gender is completely pointless outrage. Humans simply don’t fit into two neat and tidy little boxes where everyone is cisgender, heterosexual, and biologically “normal.” It just doesn’t work that way, so why are people trying to police it all? These people need to get a real hobby.

The oven: a dream

I am not in this dream. I am merely observing from the outside. I can sense the emotions of the men in this dream, but none of them is me.

There are three men dragging a sort of cart out from the desert towards a large steel building. The cart is something like a tricycle or a tripod with wheels. It is made of a sturdy metal with three arched legs that end in wheels. In the center of the cart is a depression filled with ashes and bits of charcoal; a heavy chain comes out of the ashes and hangs down the side.

The cart is very heavy, and does not move easily, but the men are very determined to get it to the building quickly. Something is about to happen, and they need to be ready.

Inside the building there is a large heavy iron door leading into a large chamber that takes up most of the building. The chamber is as large as perhaps a football field, with a ceiling at least forty feet high. The walls are charred concrete, and the floor is covered with mostly sand and bits of burnt debris. Something else is covering the floor in flowing lines all about. I realize that they are some sort of eggs, slightly larger than a human head. They are black and made of a soft material like reptile eggs.

The men push the cart carefully towards the center of the room. Their feeling of unease intensifies. Under the ashes in the cart, there is something alive, now sleeping, but just starting to come awake. When it is fully awake, it will be angry and hungry. They position the cart carefully in the right place. One of the men takes a quick tug on the chain, and there is a groaning sound that fills the room.

The other two men pull out machetes, and proceed to walk around, slashing at the eggs and opening them, three or four at a slice. A squealing, chittering sound issues out of the opened eggs, along with a dark purplish goo.

Satisfied that everything is in order, the men scurry out of the room and push the iron door shut, locking it in place with a large wheel.

The men wait and watch. There are thick glass windows in the wall, where they can see things beginning to stir.

From out of the opened eggs, small creatures emerge. They are humanoid in form, but are clearly not human; they actually look rather like Muppets. They let out high-pitched squeaks and seem to be exploring the room.

And then, it happens.

The thing in the cart emerges. I don’t know if I can’t see its true form, or if what I am seeing is, in fact, its true form, but all there is is a plume of fire that emerges from the ashes in the cart, arcs down to the floor, and splits into multiple smaller plumes of fire that spread about the room. There is nothing but this roaring fire pouring out, arcing and splitting over and over, chaotically filling the room. Where it hits the small creatures, they are consumed in pieces. They shriek and try to flee, but there is nowhere to go.

Eventually, the creatures are gone, and the fire disappears. There is no smoke, just charred pieces and slience.

What the Bible says about LGBTQ people

(This is lifted from a response I wrote to someone on Quora.)

Genesis 19:4 Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. 5 They called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.”

Yes, pretty bad. This is, however, a story about gang rape, which I would say is bad regardless of the gender of the victims. Do you think gang rape is only bad when the victims are male? Then you must approve of the gang rape in Judges 19, right?

Judges 19:22 While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, “Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him.” 23 The owner of the house went outside and said to them, “No, my friends, don't be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don't do this outrageous thing. 24 Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But as for this man, don't do such an outrageous thing.” 25 But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go.

Totally acceptable behavior, right? Oh, but Ezekiel says:

Ezekiel 16:49 “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen.”

like being inhospitable to me; but then what's more inhospitable than gang rape? Let's move on to Leviticus, shall we?

Leviticus 18:22 “Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.”

There's that “detestable” again, or, as whatever source you're using says, “abomination”. Do you know what else is an “abomination” (same Hebrew word תּוֹעֵבָה)?

• Egyptians eating at the same table as Jews (Genesis 43:32)
• Jews making a sacrifice in view of Egyptians (Exodus 8:26)
• Eating pork or shellfish (Deuteronomy 14:3)
• Remarriage to your ex-wife (Deuteronomy 24:4)
• Having different size weights in your house (Deuteronomy 25:16)

Wow. Nonetheless, I do think this verse is describing something very serious, due to a different Hebrew word. The word translated “man” here is not the Hebrew word for man (אִישׁ) but another word (זָכָר), that is sometimes translated “young male". A lot of translations older than the KJV, particularly in other languages, translate this word to be “boy”, making this verse about pederasty. The fact that pedophilia is a terrible thing, but the Bible addresses it nowhere (else) seems very odd. The rest of the sexual sins listed in Leviticus 18 have reasons why they are wrong, but this one doesn't. If it's about pedophilia, does it really need an explanation?

Romans 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds andnimals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

This is the whole of the Romans passage, to give context. As you can see from verse 23, it’s about idolatry. This is about why idolatry is wrong, and what idolatry does to a person who practices it. While verse 27 is clearly about men having sex with men, verse 26 is actually not about women having sex with women; people just think that because of the proximity to verse 27, but if you look, it's not there. “Natural sexual relations” is a euphemism for procreative sex; these women are probably practicing anal and oral sex with men as temple prostitutes. So what about verse 27? While it’s men having sex with men, these are clearly heterosexual men who have become perverted because it says they “abandoned natural relations with women” and “God gave them over to shameful lusts…and received in themselves the due penalty”. This doesn't sound like homosexuals, because gay men didn't leave women and then feel penalized for having sex with men; they like having sex with men! These are apparently heterosexual men that got perverted sexually because they perverted worship, and they aren't actually enjoying themselves. As you can see from the last few verses, they also developed a lot of other problems besides sexual ones.

1 Corinthians 6:9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Here's 1 Corinthians 6:9 with context from the NIV. The phrase “men who have sex with men” in many other translations is rendered “homosexuals”, but it’s a translation of two Greek words, μαλακοι and αρσενοκοιται. Now, μαλακοι is a word we know the meaning of, it essentially means “soft" and was a word that 1st century Jews used as a pejorative for clean-shaven gentiles; what that would have to do with sex is unclear. The other word, αρσενοκοιται, is a word that, despite what your source claims, nobody knows what Paul meant by it, because this is the first place the word ever appeared in Greek literature: Paul made it up. If It’s supposed to mean “homosexuals”, it’s a bit odd, because 5th century church father John the Faster wrote a letter to a fellow pastor expressing concern that some of the men in his congregation might have committed “αρσενοκοιτια” (English supposedly “homosexuality”) with their wives. How does a man commit homosexuality with his wife? The word likely is a sexual sin as it includes a root meaning “bed", but the nature of the sexual sin is unknown. (When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he translated αρσενοκοιται as “boy molester”, whatever that is worth.) The thing is, no Bible in any language translated this word into “homosexuals” before the 1946 Revised Standard Version, of which the head of the translation team later admitted that it was a poor choice. It was fixed in the NRSV, but in the meantime, scores of translators followed the RSV’s lead and made the same translation choice.

So now, millions of Christians, many of whom were already homophobic most likely, got confirmation from badly translated Bible verses that “homosexuals” were bad people, this despite verse 11, which says that whatever all of the sins that are listed in verses 9-10 are, they're things you can put behind you when you are saved. Meanwhile, thousands of young gay and transgender Christian kids are praying fervently for God to fix them, and that prayer never gets answered. Is God unable to fix those “sins", like God has limited power on what sins he can set someone free from? Of course not! God can fix any sin, don't you agree? Modern science has taught us that sexual orientation and gender are things that we are born with, however. In other words, God makes LGBTQIA children. And God doesn't make mistakes!

The Bible never condemns homosexuality, and it never says anything at all about transgender people.

It's not a living, but could it be?

I recently read a book by an online marketer who has this whole system for supposedly making a living through writing. Definitely, like many writers of all sorts, I’ve got an interest in the idea, but I also have my doubts.

I’ve never tried to monetize any of my online work, and I’ve never had enough of an online following to make it seem worthwhile. I would consider the idea certainly if my content were a bit less eclectic, and that garnered a real following. I figure I would focus on writing about topics related to religion, as that’s my greatest area of interest, but is that marketable?

The idea of writing about religion and getting paid for it isn’t far-fetched; there are plenty of people who do that for a living, even on Substack. It seems like a lot of these people have some sort of formal training, however. I follow Father Nathan Monk, but I assume as a priest, he’s been to seminary. The sort of stuff that I would write about would probably be similar to a lot of what he writes about, and while I don’t believe he makes a living off of writing, he’s got a respectable following, at least.

Anyway, it seems like being more focused would be a plus in having a following. While I enjoy writing on a wide range of topics, and don’t think I’ll stop doing that here at least, I think someone who’s a paid subscriber wants some consistency. I know the few people that I have paid subscriptions for are consistently writing on specific topics I’m interested in. I do follow a few people who are more eclectic like me, but not with paid subscriptions.

So if anyone is still reading, what do you think? Is there an audience out there for an agnostic Christian writing about issues of faith and doubt?

The story of Lance Twiggs

So this is just a rant about what I feel I am seeing happen in Utah right now. As you well know, so long as you haven't been living under a rock, on September 10th, Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a public event in Utah, just as he happened to be talking with someone about transgender mass shooters. Kirk, being a darling of the far-right, was assumed by many to have been shot by a far-left activist. Many on the right essentially called for a war against the left in America.

Then, the shooter was caught, and it was, in fact, a white conservative Christian male, as so many shooters are. Etchings on the bullet casings seemed to point to the shooter being a member of the Groyper movement, essentially neo-Nazi trolls. This was, of course, a bit of a letdown for Kirk's fans, who were really itching for a fight with the left.

So then, the whole story makes a swing way out into left field. The shooter lived in an apartment with other men his age. One of them was named Lance Twiggs, and when he was interviewed, he was dressed in an animal onesie.

 

This is where the official story goes from there: the FBI claims to have gotten hold of texts between the shooter and Twiggs. These texts revealed that Twiggs was in fact the shooter's transgender girlfriend, and the real reason for Kirk's assassination was retribution for his transphobia.

There have been a lot of articles in the news about the relationship with Twiggs, and what sort of a person Twiggs was. In none of these articles does anyone who knew him refer to Twiggs as transgender, or use feminine pronouns for him. Many people have commented on how the texts don't sound like they were written by someone the shooter's age. Personally, I keep questioning what transgender woman (as the vast majority of transgender people rename themselves after coming out) names herself "Lance".

I actually have friends who are believing the official story, but to me, it sounds like completely fabricated bullshit to place the blame for the death of Kirk on transgender people. What do others think?