"Tweet 7, verse 3" is such a funny line imo

I think Natalie can confirm that you're never really an ex-philosopher, just a recovering one.

"I imagine her rocking back and forth in the corner of her like 11th living room in her 6th castle on Twitter sweating"

That really made me lol

I met a pregnant trans guy, and served him in an educational context for months.
He was so generous with everyone’s awkward smiles and linguistic adjustments. Sweet, young, idealistic dude with a lot of challenges in his life (a lot due to racism and poverty). Meeting him helped all this ideology feel much less abstract for me. There is real human life and health and dignity at stake — and those are the important things that get missed by these transphobes.

As a cis het woman who has given birth, I was not referred to as a birthing person at any point but as a person pregnant at age 40, I was referred to as a "geriatric mother" 😂

Omg, I need Natalie’s deadpanned soundbite of “nooo, don’t transition you’re so sexy aha” 😂

My wife used to work in the cervical cancer screening program. They mostly said women, but the screening needed to cover people with a cervix. A trans man with a cervix needs cervical screening. This has to be communicated or people die.

My favorite way to deal with bigots is to say "I'm so sorry that happened to you, who said that?" in a concerned tone, when people complain about others policing their speech with pronouns or "birthing person" or whatever. Usually the other person will have to awkardly explain that that never really happened to them but, you know, people do that. And then you can naively ask "What people?" and make the situation more and more embarrassing. But they can't start to argue with you because you're just interested in their oh so horrible experiences. 10/10 can recommend.

I'm a molecular scientist and I work in the lab for a big urology practice. We indicate male or female sex and if there is a variation we add a note. A transgender woman can need to be screened for prostate cancer, but if she's been on estradiol and/or progesterone for a certain period of time we'll be looking at different ranges on her labs to indicate a potential abnormality. As to how we refer to patients? Speaking collectively, in the above example we would say "prostate patients." Because that's the group we're talking about. But individually, we refer to the patient how they wish to be referred to.

And this isn't because I'm the resident trans man of the lab and I demand we use inclusive language. It's just how we talk because it's efficient and accurate. Which is a big deal in medicine.

the point about civil rights movements being sanitized as being completely non-violent reminds me of the argument about "parents' rights to choose what their children see" in school, from people who don't seem to realize that this was EXACTLY what bigots said about integrating black children into schools

Suffragettes were VERY violent and uh not polite…. And in turn,  they were tortured. To say there wasn’t violence erases women’s history, regardless of how you feel about what they did.

As a birthing person who recently birthed two persons- no one has ever referred to me as a birthing person.

When she says "churches became more on fire than they previously had been", I'm thinking of an act of the holy ghost, a spiritual revival, people dancing and speaking in tongues, miracles happening.

To answer Natalie’s question: I gave birth to my youngest in 2021, and everyone called me a woman or mother, but I was often given generalized paperwork that used inclusive language. I’m always happy to see that. I’m a woman, not every AFAB person is. I don’t see how someone could throw away their credibility over something that not only doesn’t affect me, but helps more people access more comprehensive healthcare. Ugh.

Feel compelled to report that as someone who was pregnant and gave birth a year and a half ago, no one ever, not once,  not for medical purposes, not even for fun referred to me a "birthing person" or as a "menstruating person." People getting upset about these terms are upset about arguments they're having in their minds.

One of the scariest most stressful things that have ever happened to me was being quote-tweeted by some republican senator with hundreds of thousands of followers, calling me a feminazi. I had less than 300 followers. Had to immediately delete my tweet but even then hundreds of conservatives have already found my twitter, spread it around, and were showing up in my DMs and replies calling me all sorts of things and harassing me endlessly.

I can't even imagine going through the same thing, but this time it's JKR and her fourteen million followers. Jesus Christ.

About the myth of past "peaceful" movements that were in fact violent. I finished reading "Babel" by R.F. Kuang last night, and it's an excellent study of violence as a (sometimes necessary) form of protest in an unjust society. Highly recommend.

As a lesbian mother who did ot give birth to her child it would've been so helpful if people could've just asked "who is the birthing parent?" instead "who is the mom?" Because, well, we are in fact both the mother, but what you actually want to know (for example for medical purposes) is who just gave birth. I don't know why people have such a problem with inclusive language which is often way more specific and clear. "People who menstruate" is SO much more precise than just "women". My mom is a woman - but she doesn't menstruate anymore, so she's most likely not who you're talking to (or about). Precise language is important.

So I'm nonbinary and actually had a baby around 2 years ago. No one ever used the term "birthing person" AT ALL. All the medical professionals either just called me "mom," or they asked me what I wanted to be referred to after I mentioned I was nonbinary. I think the term "birthing parent" MIGHT have been used on one of the medical forums or something. But from my experience, I don't see medical professionals using the term by default.

Maya could claim that she's only upset about Tala because she hates sloppy worldbuilding. But since she's friends with JK Rowling that's not credible.