…I could have told you that 🤷
Source: https://x.com/BriannaWu/status/1984574165643403370
Not my usual kind of source (Xitter), but I want any centrists out there who ask trans people to “just get along” / compromise with actual hate groups that want them eradicated to know that it doesn’t work.
There is no such thing as a reasonable bigot, by definition.
First off, Brianna Wu is not my sister or comrade, so she can write that down.
Goldwater was absolute dogwater but he was right about republicans in 1981…
“On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs."
“Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
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This is why advocating for “finding middle ground”, or centrism, or this repackaged warmed over Abundance crap is so toxic.
You can’t match these people half way. you have to beat them
Most arguments have a middle ground, but its a case by case basis. In this case the sides are:
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let a marginalized group experience a little joy and feel comfortable in their bodies
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refuse to accept that a middle school understanding of gender and biology might not be totally correct.
Meeting in the middle here is how you get second class citizens.
I see a lot of (often well deserved) shit talk about centrists/middle ground. Honestly, it IS silly to talk about middle ground between reason and raw hate. I do, however, doubt myself if I look around and find myself spouting the most extreme ideas on a given topic. How isnt that scary to people? I dont want to be the fanatic. I was raised with talk about the middle path and the golden mean. Virtue in courage is found between recklessness and cowardice. I still subscribe to that notion, but absolutely recognize how one can lull themselves into false means based on the prevailing culture (Overton window). Still, I dont see how it is that hard to have some bedrock principals, and use those to anchor a true middle ground.
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once again ignoring entirely that trans masc people exist and we are impacted by the bullshit she spouts as well. what impacts one of us affects all of us, and I am not your fucking sister.
I just replied to another comment with this but I’ll put it as a top level comment here because I think it’s important.
I want MORE right wing idiots to realize they’re wrong and join our camp. The more the better. Remember, these people are still our neighbors, they still exist and we will have to interact with them outside our homes. I want more reasonable people, so when we do have converts, please receive them with open arms.
Okay, you were a huge idiot, but welcome to sanity part 1. Of they’re big enough to realize they were wrong (and they’ve had a LOT of brainwashing, it takes a lot for them to snap out of the crazy) we should be big enough to say bygones.
I understand the want for revenge because they were “the enemy”. I understand, they were a huge asshole and now we have to play nice with them? That doesn’t sound fair! But I think we have to, we want to welcome more idiots into sanity and reason. The less idiots out there, the better. And for what it’s worth, there are people that listen to her, if they can now be on the side of reason, they can pull a lot more people with them.
If we don’t we’ll make it harder for people to move out of the right wing camp, and I want much much less people in the right wing camp
Even after all of that, she still doesn’t get it:
I think many of our most extreme ideas are bad. But theirs are worse.
The problem is that “our” (using quotes as I’m only progressive, not LGBTQ+) most extreme ideas are only held by a minority of progressive people, and meanwhile the things she thinks are their “most extreme ideas” are the ones that she saw personally, while interacting with people who don’t mind interacting with a trans-woman. Those aren’t their “most extreme ideas.” They’re their mainstream ideas.
She’s comparing our most extreme ideas against their mainstream ideas.
It’s sad she’s so close but still on ‘I want a middle ground on these issues’ really? Like…. She is okay with a little disrespect? A little discrimination?
Just a little second class citizen, as a treat.
Taking the middle ground with Nazis is saying you want the holocaust to happen but only three million jews should die.
Me over here with actually somewhat radical positions.
All HRT should be available OTC. (Yes, including T.)
A parent denying a child access to puberty blockers should be required to pay reparations if the child continues to identify as trans into adulthood.
Require unisex bathrooms for any business larger than a bananna stand.
I don’t believe parents should be able to make any permanent decisions about a child’s body.
This includes hormones, tattoos, genital mutilation of any kind, plastic surgery, piercings.
Children cannot provide consent for anything.
Unfortunately doing nothing is still a choice. And things aren’t better just because they are natural.
It is morally abominable to believe that it is better for 100 trans kids to go through the Hell on Earth of the wrong puberty than for one cis kid to mistakenly go on puberty blockers or HRT. It shows that you fundamentally believe the life of 1 cis person to be worth the lives of 100 trans people. You do not believe in the equal moral value of every human life. You fundamentally, in your heart of hearts, believe trans people to be subhuman, because you do not place the value of their pain anywhere near that of cis people.
I think that ratio is an important one in this debate. Is it actually around 1% (of those reporting dysphoria ) that decide it was a mistake post puberty?
Also sorry if dysphoria is the wrong word.
HRT has a success rate over 90%, measured as more than 90% of people who go on HRT report an improvement in their quality of life compared to before HRT. Of that other roughly 10%, the majority report reasons outside of regret for stopping HRT. Things like: medical complications, financial reasons, loss of jobs or housing due to being visibly trans, loss of friends and family due to being trans, assault or rape, etc., and most report that they would start HRT again as soon as possible. Only a small portion of that 10% say that they regret taking HRT and that it was a mistake.
So is it literally 1%? I don’t know, but it’s certainly less than 10%, which gives HRT one of the highest success rates in the field of medicine. By comparison, antidepressants have a success rate somewhere around 36% and knee replacement surgery hovers a little over 50%.
The biggest regrets reported by those who take HRT are that they didn’t start sooner, and/or being forced through an unwanted puberty with permanent life-altering effects as a child - which is why puberty blockers are a critical component of trans healthcare. Puberty blockers have been in use for young girls since the 80s for what’s known as “precocious puberty” - when a girl starts puberty at a very young age, usually around 8 but can be as young as 4. Nobody cared when it was cis girls taking them so that they would start puberty at a normal age. But when trans people started taking them to avoid permanent, life-altering changes until they’re old enough to consent to whether or not they want to go on HRT, puberty blockers suddenly became this untested drug being forced upon young boys by nefarious outside forces in the public eye.
I’m going to push back on OTC HRT because of the health risks. Supraphysiologic estrogen and testosterone can both have lethal side effects, so correct dosing and monitoring for health complications are essential components of trans healthcare.
Both are already OTC in most of the world, specifically most developing countries.
More importantly, you are applying an insane and bad-faith standard when assessing medication. ANY medication can have lethal side effects. Down a bottle full of Tylenol and you’ll condemn yourself to a slow agonizing death of liver failure. Yet you can buy that shit at gas stations.
You answered the wrong question. You asked, “can HRT be dangerous?” Any rational person trying to form an unbiased opinion about it would ask, “is HRT of comparable risk to existing OTC medications?”
In countries besides America, Tylenol comes in blister packs of maybe 20 total pills per package in a lower dose than the American variation. The drug and marketing regulations here are not a good example and I think a lot of medications that are currently OTC need to be much more closely regulated or have things like the inconvenient packaging and MUCH better warnings on them for patient safety.
That being said, poorly managed (or un-managed) HRT has more potential for significant harm than most OTC medications. There are many complications that can come from exogenous hormone treatment for both trans and cis patients, and the risks need to be adequately assessed and managed. Estrogen significantly increases the risk of blood clots and strokes, and Testosterone drastically increases the risk of heart attack and organ failure if not dosed appropriately.
In no way do I intend to restrict trans healthcare, but most medications on the market in America need to be much more closely regulated than they are now because of the risks of harms that can vastly outweigh the benefits, especially when not dosed or monitored accurately.
You’re spreading anti trans FUD. The risks are extremely modest. The risks you cite, like heart attack risk on T, are just from moving an FTM person from a female to make heart attack profile. Men have a greater risk of heart attack than women do. Having a male hormone profile gives you male health risks. But people like you like to spread fear by citing this as an effect of HRT.
You’re portraying hrt as this crazy substance, but we’re talking bioidentical hormones here. They are the same exact molecules that are produced naturally.
You are shamelessly spreading anti trans propaganda. Or take estrogen for example. Trans women raise their E levels to the 100-300 range, the normal female E range. Yet cis women, when pregnant, experience E levels 10-20 times those levels. The human body can handle very high levels of estrogen quite well. You can take 10x the recommended E dose and still be extremely unlikely to have any adverse effects from it.
Show me one single person that has died from the misuse of modern bioidentical hormones. Find me one. Because hrt is absolutely far safer than almost every otc medication out there. You can literally take 10x the recommended doses. That’s how safe it is. It’s safe because we’re talking the exact same molecules that are made by the body.
There’s a reason diy is so common among the trans community. Even most doctors are comically ignorant and repeat long disproven myths like the ones you repeat here.
HRT is extremely safe when dosed appropriately. As I said in another comment, I’m less worried about trans folks getting the HRT wrong than cis people taking a bunch of extra hormones because some influencer convinced them that more estrogen or more testosterone will fix all their health problems. Making something OTC makes it available to everyone, not just the people that need it. Trans people need HRT, cis people very rarely do.
And yet, other countries where HRT is OTC don’t have an epidemic of cis kids dead from taking T and E. Your concern is purely hypothetical. Meanwhile we have real world data showing the risks of OTC HRT are minimal. And even cis people taking it have very low risks, comparable to other otc medications.
Social media leads people to do all sorts of stupid things. We don’t ban bleach because someone might try and drink it to cure covid.
It isn’t the cis kids I worry about. It’s the menopausal woman in the emergency department with a DVT and PE from the estrogen she got online on the advice of her chiropractor. It’s the man in his 50’s that thought testosterone would fix his lost libido and fatigue that now has to get coronary artery stents because he got his dosing recommendations from body building influencers.
It’s the real patients I have seen and treated that concern me when these hormones aren’t even that freely available. It’s not a hypothetical for me, it’s real people that have suffered real harm even if they didn’t die from it.
A good compromise is never just halfway between two policies. It requires understanding both perspectives and addressing their actual problems. So the compromise here would be trans rights for trans people, and free mental health care for anti-trans people.
The Trans Athlete debate also never seems to address the fact that it’s all unfair from the get go. Being born to a poor family? Being born with a birth defect? Being born into an unsupportive family/community? Being born at the wrong time of year?
It also shouldn’t matter how well someone does in sports. No athlete is using their skills in the work place and students shouldn’t need athletics scholarships to pay for school. It should just be for fun with nothing on the line.
In the real world, it doesn’t even cause a real fairness issue. The Olympics started allowing trans competitors in the 90s, but there’s never been a trans medal winner. If there was a real advantage, then you’d expect the best person at some sports in some counties to be trans, so there to be trans athletes competing, and their advantage to put them on the podium. You’d also potentially expect some countries to pad their team with trans people to get more medals. This hasn’t happened.
I think you’re kind of confusing trans people and people with DSDs. The Olympics stopped doing sex testing themselves in the 90’s. There have been a few biological males with DSDs that won women’s medals in the Olympics though. All 3 medals for the women’s 800m at the 2016 Rio Olympics were awarded to biological males, Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba, and Margaret Wambui. Likewise, Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting are also biologically male (not trans as some people incorrectly claimed) and notably won gold in 2024. They were all wrongly assigned female at birth but have the physical advantages of male puberty.
Ana Caldas is a more specific example of why trans people that are biologically male have an insurmountable advantage in the women’s category.
Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-ting are also biologically male
This is a lie. Wikipedia links to no fewer than 3 sources that confirm this is a lie. I will be blocking you.
“Those cheering fans have embraced Khelif throughout her run in Paris even as she faced an extraordinary amount of scrutiny from world leaders, major celebrities and others who have questioned her eligibility or falsely claimed she was a man.” – https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/algerian-boxer-imane-khelif-fights-for-olympic-gold-after-enduring-abuse-fueled-by-misinformation
'The participation of Algeria’s Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin has proved controversial given they were disqualified from the 2023 World Championships.
“Let’s be very clear, we are talking about women’s boxing,” said Bach at Saturday’s daily IOC briefing.
"We have two boxers who are born as a woman, who have been raised as a woman, who have a passport as a woman and who have competed for many years as a woman.
“This is the clear definition of a woman. There was never any doubt about them being a woman.”’ – https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/articles/c28e88jdprno
'Khelif and a second boxer, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, fell foul of IBA eligibility rules […].
[…] a March 2023 IBA board meeting stated that “the athletes do not meet one of the eligibility criteria”, without stating which one.’ – https://www.reuters.com/sports/olympics/who-is-algerian-boxer-imane-khelif-2024-08-03/
We have two boxers who are born as a woman […]
Right, they were incorrectly assigned female at birth and raised as women but are biologically male, because
the athletes do not meet one of the eligibility criteria
I’m confused as to why you think those quotes support your point. The sex testing was done by an accredited lab, and is the eligibility criteria they do not meet.
The sources people cite for Imane Khelif being biologically male are:
- an opponent with a history of forfeiting after a single punch and claiming after the fact that her opponent was cheating and that was why she was forced to forfeit did it again. When she did that in the past with other opponents, there wasn’t any assumption that the baseless cheating allegations were on gender/sex grounds.
- The IBA, an infamously corrupt organisation with the infamously corrupt Gazprom as its majority owner disqualified her from a tournament without saying why. There are enough historic allegations of them disqualifying people for refusing to throw matches that it’s plausible that the only reason she was disqualified was that she refused to throw a match they wanted to rig.
- JK Rowling said she looked like a man. She does this a lot with a lot of cisgender women due to internalising unrealistic femenine beauty standards.
People have claimed sex testing was done by an accreddited independent lab, but chasing that citation just leads to the IBA saying she was disqualified without elaborating why, which doesn’t support the claim.
There’s no actual evidence to support the speculation. That doesn’t mean it’s untrue, but does mean it’s unreasonable to present it as fact - there’s just as much evidence for alternative speculation, e.g. that she bribed the opponent to forfeit and was disqualified by the IBA because they found she’d bribed people to forfeit in the past, and it would be just as unreasonable to spread that rumour I just invented around as if it were fact.
JK Rowling/IBA/etc don’t matter, they’re just noise. The sex test is what matters. Chasing that citation shows this
https://www.3wiresports.com/articles/2025/6/1/xxyetyl1aewfij823hnfdrsbi1sqjm
And note this correction (from the IOC!), which straightforwardly implies that it’s a DSD case
The weight of evidence strongly points towards Imane Khelif being biologically male. It doesn’t mean the IBA isn’t corrupt, JK Rowling isn’t terrible etc, but none of that matters.
TBH this is probably just more grifting from Brianna Wu. Are there any actual sources for “laugh as she got aids from being raped” type comments? afaik terfs would be more like “that’s unfortunate but not our problem”
