A straight white guy friend was complaining about not being able to find any gaming groups for WoW that weren't full of MAGA assholes. He said he keeps joining guilds with older (60+) casual gamers like himself because he can't keep up with the kids, and he'll start to make friends, but then they will reveal themselves to be Trump-lovers. He asked, "What am I doing wrong?"

I said, "First of all, your screen name is Russian. Leftys are gonna be wary of that, and the Alt-right loves it.
Second, you should put some social signals in your bio, like pronouns."

"Okay, but how do I tell people I'm cool, but I'm not gay or trans?"
I explained to him what "cis" and "ally" mean. He had never heard of this before, which showed me what kind of online spaces he was landing in.

Next, I said, "Look for the furries."
"But, I'm not a furry?"
"Yes, but the presence of furries are like lichen. They are a sign of a healthy ecosystem."

This was about 3 months ago. Now, he tells me he joined a guild labeled as LGBTQ-friendly and has made several new cool friends. He says, "I thought they would be talking about sex all the time but it's just a regular group." He mentioned that there are many women and PoC in the group too, and "Everyone's so nice on dungeon runs, telling people they did a good job and being supportive, sharing loot."

I didn't tell him that this is what the whole world would be like without patriarchal toxic masculinity, because I think he figured it out himself.

You might think working a phone repair kiosk is a waste of my skills. Yeah nah.

Today, this kid came in with an iPhone that was more than cracked, it was banana-fied.

“What happened?” I asked, turning the wreckage over in my hands. I don’t think there was a single salvageable part. “And have you considered just upgrading?”

“My novel’s on there”, the kid said, wringing his hands anxiously. “It got ran over by a hauler bot.”

“Got a backup?”. The tears in the kid’s eyes were all the answer he needed to give. “Okay, event rebasing is the only way to fix this”, I gestured at the price board, “can you afford that?”

He gulped. “Uh, just.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Can you really fix it?”. Hope flickered in his eyes.

“Let’s see, no win no fee”.

I held the smashed and bent phone-ana in my hands and turned it over, feeling its shape in space and time. With my /other sight/ I saw its lifeline leading away from where the kid had been, a shimmering trail of history leading back in time. With the fingers of my mind, I felt back along the lifeline until i felt the bump, beyond which the device had been a flat rectangle. Exploring the shape of the damage event I twisted the lifeline into a loop. Now here’s the tricky bit; if you have the knack, and you dig your nails in /just so/ you can pinch out a moment in time and detach it. I rubbed the lifeline with my mental fingers, smoothing out the join where the excised moment had been.

Blinking back to the present, I powered on the phone and handed it back to its owner. “All good?”

The kid’s fingers flew over the screen as he checked on his preciousss, and breathed a huge sigh. “All good. That’s incredible, can you fix *anything* like that?”

“Almost. Like?”

He avoided my gaze, staring down at my hands on the counter with their iridescent nails, matching the highlight colours in my hair. He made eye contract briefly, wide eyes again a bit teary. “Even…..me?”

Oh, that. “Absolutely not. *wink* Such things are not done and definitely not by me. Clear?”

*nod*

“Okay, hold still.” It’s a different technique than rebasing, especially because i like to spread the change over a few years to conceal the edit.

“All done”.

“Oh wow”, she said, reaching up to feel her shoulder length mauve hair (clearly I’d nailed that detail), then taking a twirl. “How, how much do I owe you?”

“On the house and you weren’t here. “

The tears were back. “Thank you thank you, this is the best. “

“My pleasure, have a great life”

“Thanks, you too” she said. “Bye!”

“Wait! Don’t forget your phone!”

#Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot

“When I meet with lawmakers to try to convince them not to support policies that take away my daughter’s medical care ... I ask them to pray with me. My hope is to show that lawmakers who weaponize my own faith against my family don’t speak for me, and they don’t speak for affirming Christians.” https://www.texasobserver.org/trans-children-gods-gifts/

#trans #transphobia #LGBTQIA+ #politics #USpol #Texas #TXlege #Healthcare #HumanRights #news

Suppose the anti-Black, anti-trans policy Bros try to do 10 outrageous things*.

7 of them affect everyone and everything.

2 primarily affect Black people.

1 primarily affects trans people.

There's massive pushback on the 7, minimal pushback on the 2, and near silence on the 1.

So 6 of the 7 get reversed. None of the rest are reversed🤯

Out of every 100 US citizens, 14 are Black, and 1 or 2 are trans.

Even if every single trans person pushed back hard on an anti-trans attack, there are not enough trans people to push back for themselves.

This only works if we fight with them.

The alternative, is abandoning trans folk to nazis.

*(This breakdown of the 10 horrible things is for illustrative purposes only. I'm not suggesting that this is the proportional breakdown of their bad policies).

The level of rank, direct, and brutal hatred being directed at the trans community by the current US administration is sickening. If you're not actively following it, you may not realize how bad it is. You *need* to educate yourself so you can take action.

Literally, cis-ally actions are one of the only things left saving trans lives right now in the US. And it is very much going to be about saving lives.

This isn't a "culture war" or "identity" politics.

The white house is defining medical procedures with overwhelming support by major medical orgs around the world as *mutilation*. They are trying to classify parents who care for trans kids by moving to states where doing so is legal as *kidnapping*.

This admin is forcing parents of trans kids to choose: do I force my child to suffer, doubling their risk of suicide? or do I risk kidnapping charges by moving to where they can get the medical care they need, with a regret rate lower than LASIK.

They are at least removing all support for adult trans people, from medical support to other forms, and working hard to criminalize their existence.

Trans people have over 7x the risk of suicide as the wider population, and that compounds in many intersectional ways with other risk factors. Immediate access to gender-affirming care reduced suicidality by **50%**. That is an *incredibly* effective treatment compared to other widely accepted medical options.

When we deny trans people, especially children, access to gender affirming care that is pervasively endorsed by all major medical and psychiatric groups, we are killing them. The math is simple and devastating.

We even have peer-reviewed research directly showing that enacting anti-transgender laws has a significant and causal impact on suicide risk among transgender and nonbinary youth.

So you, cis-person reading this, have a choice.

Oppose and shut down all of these anti-transgender legal steps, every one of them a hateful act of systemic violence.

Or let them kill more children.

It is literally life or death for the trans community.

[after literally any meeting]

i drank coffee for this?

yes

https://modem.io/blog/blog-monetization/