@whereami

6 Followers
59 Following
178 Posts

I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset.

In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia.

In 2005 I started medical transition. For the state to recognise this I had to submit to standards of "care" which were humiliating, degrading and which placed me at risk of violence.

But I did it "by the book"

As I did it "by the book", the NHS agreed to reregister me as female, which makes sense because my anatomy now is.

In 2007 I had sex reassignment surgery. This had to be signed off by two mental health professionals, "by the book", and it was.

In 2008 I applied for gender recognition. This involved signing a statutory obligation, stating that I promised, BY LAW, to live fully as female for the rest of my life. As this was done, "by the book", the government promised that it would treat me as such.

Its first act as treating me as female was to annul our marriage because it was a same sex marriage and those were not allowed.

The state then reissued my birth certificate, correcting the "mistake" it had originally made when it recorded me as male, "by the book".

In 2009 Sylvia and I married for the second time, in a same sex civil partnership, which was done "by the book", because the state regarded me as female and I was bound by law to be female.

In 2013 we married again, because the state decided that same sex marriage was in fact allowed after all. This was done, "by the book". Despite having been married for 12 years, we had to submit ourselves to individual questioning to prove our relationship was genuine, "by the book".

In April of 2025 the state turned round and told me that I had been mistaken. That it never regarded me as female. That I was male the whole time. That the marriage it annulled because it was a same sex marriage was never a same sex marriage (but it stays annulled). That the civil partnership in 2009 never really happened because "opposite sex" civil partnerships were not allowed in 2009.

And that the legal obligation I have to live as female for the rest of my life, which I signed and gave up my marriage for, is still in effect but also if I keep following it, I am breaking the law and subject to arrest. As it's still valid, presumably if I don't keep following it, I am also breaking the law and subject to arrest.

The law of the land simultaneously requires me to be both a man and a woman and if I do either then I am breaking the law and subject to arrest.

At every stage I did what the state asked me to, even though it was humiliating, degrading and cruel.

And it kept moving the goalposts, and reneging on the agreements it made, whilst continuing to hold me to them even when they are now mutually contradictory.

Apparently this is "all my fault" and I should have known that this would be the consequences of my actions when I started medical transition 2 decades ago.

Perhaps you can now appreciate why we are upset?

@Iconfactory I’m on iOS 18.6.2, in dark mode with light icons. For both Tot and Tapestry, the appearance of icons is inconsistent between the home screen, the selector in the app, and on the “You have changed the icon” message that results when selecting one. E.g. in Tot the automatically adapting icons correctly show light versions on the home screen but are dark in the app and message; and the classic light Dot icon is dark in the message and light elsewhere. Is this an app bug or an iOS bug?
I’ve heard it said
that the explanation
for the foul national mood
is “unprocessed COVID grief”
which may be the case
but it is worth remembering
that should you try
to process or even acknowledge
that grief
you will be accused
of living in the past.
In Gaza, every person, the first thing they want to tell me in English or Arabic is 'We need food.' They are saying that because their assumption is the world doesn’t know, because how would this be allowed to happen if the world knew? ~ UNICEF spokesperson James Elder
The problem with appeasement is that you eventually run out of other people’s countries.

@JuliusGoat Yep.

"But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre. Anti-Semite and Jew (1944).

It's very important to understand, fascists don't just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or an unintended side-effect.

It's the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself the thing you're able to deny others, because you dominate, is the whole point.
For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue—the greatest.

It's best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy as a virtue. It's how they signal that the things they are doing to people were never meant to be equally applied.

It's not an inconsistency. It's very consistent to the only true fascist value, which is domination.

This is the line in the sand. Crackdowns do not end with one case; they metastasize, emboldening those in power to stretch the limits of what the public will tolerate. Every equivocation, every glance away, permits the machinery of state violence to keep turning.
https://www.theindex.media/first-they-came-for-the-student-activists/
First They Came for the Student Activists

Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest escalates state repression, signaling that under Donald Trump, dissent will be criminalized.

The Index.