Breaking news: Game developer calls a racist mod racist; white tears ensue

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Content Notice: Racism, white fragility, waaahhh censorship.

Paradox Interactive released a speculative fiction strategy game called Stellaris. PI is one of my favourite game developers because their games play like live action puzzles. It tickles a problem solving part of my brain that I haven’t been able to exercise in years. PI’s shtick is usually historical fiction, but when they tried Stellaris, a Sci Fi game, they did a lot to implement in-game content creation tools to allow players to invent their own galactic societies. They also released modding tools if players wanted to attempt something more technical than the in-game editors allowed.

Cue a user by the name of Progeny of Europe (I’m sure you can see where this is going), who made a mod to remove the in-game human portraits that weren’t white.

This, by itself, was apparently not what made Paradox Interactive pull the plug on Progeny of Europe’s mod. Rather it was the–prepare to be shocked–racist description and remarks accompanying it.

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Breaking news: City spends pennies on empty gesture, bigots freak out; dogs bark

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We’re coming up on summer in the northern hemisphere, which for many places means a Pride festival. Now, I’ve got a lot of opinions about my local Pride festival, but I can acknowledge on a very pragmatic level that, if nothing else, an event of this calibre generates some nice business (and by extension, revenue for the city). This means that whatever my city spends in preparation for the Pride festival is almost surely covered by the enormous profits raked in by the city’s taxation.

Back in 2015, Edmonton decided to paint three whole crosswalks with a rainbow in preparation for Pride. In a recent Facebook post, the City reported that the crosswalks would be renewed for another festival.

Three crosswalks, which might take an hour to paint each (if that), and $200 of paint. Not a terribly expensive gesture. And I guess it’s nice that the government is conceptually supportive of your rights and whatnot but Edmonton still has gaping deficiencies in Queer support networks and I’d love for city council to put their money where their mouth is. And the Pride festival is kind of dominated by cis gay white dudes and corporations and the comfortably middle class so the whole political rebellion thing is kind of losing its edge these days… ehh, I don’t think anyone cares.

I mostly have an excuse to wear thigh-high rainbow socks.

Anyway, so the city spends ~$200 on a throwaway gesture of support. How do people respond?

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Good music to have stuck in your head: Jamie Berry

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About a year or so into my transition, I started to find interesting ways to express the confidence that was slowly building in me. I tried a few different sexy dance styles to capture the expression of my libido that had been heavily, heavily suppressed: belly dancing, pole dancing, strip teasing. One of the things that I always had a bit of difficulty with was that the style of these dances typically involved music that didn’t make me feel sexy. I don’t particularly like club/strip music (too heavy on the bass), and it really distracted from connecting to the id-driven impulses that make successful sexy dancing so sexy.

Cue electro swing:

Not all of the Jamie Berry swing would be a good song to strip to either, but the genre seems to help me click a lot easier than club/strip music. The very first song in this Jamie Berry collection, “Peeping Tom,” is one such song. Even just listening to it in my chair I can’t help but wiggle my hips along. I’ve got a number planned in my head which involves a classy cane, bejeweled fedora, and strip teasing out of respectable gentlemen’s formal wear.

-Shiv

Comedy recommendations

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Gina Yashere is by far one of my favourite comediennes. Now her skits still contain politically incorrect material, it’s just that the political incorrectness is the subject of ridicule.

Doc Brown and I can connect on our mutually horrifying experiences with children.

Ryan’s skit on Leo DiCaprio has aged, unfortunately, but I have to plug a fellow Canuck.

-Shiv

Didn’t “Try Self-Love Hard Enough:” Transition Reactions p4

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Guys, why can’t people ever just be regular wrong? No, they always have to be fractally wrong. *defeated sigh*

Content Notice for all the usual cissexist shit, plus some naturalistic fallacy and aggressive ableism.

Your transition displays a lack of self gratitude and/or is unnatural.

Yes, people have said this to me. This is actually transphobia occurring on the far left. The far right sometimes invokes “natural order” nonsense too, but there’s a special brand of transphobia that is present among otherwise left-leaning cis people: a sort of condescending and ableist pity, where trans folk are understood to transition because they, and I quote an actual chat I’ve had, “failed at loving themselves as they are.”

Gee, that horse is awfully high. How’s the weather up there?

So, let’s address the shepherd’s pie of bullshit made by our high-and-mighty White Cis Saviour. Typical disclaimer: My transition reactions series only addresses my experience of transphobia and gender dysphoria on a more-or-less anecdotal basis and does not constitute some kind of monolithic commentary on gender variance in general.

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On LGTBQIA+, aka the “alphabet soup”

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I probably missed a few letters. This unwielding intialism stands for Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual, Queer, Intersex, and Acesexual. The plus indicates the ongoing problem of pushing for an umbrella term for all kinds of uncommon or non-conforming bodies or identities.

When any of us engage in a discussion about our placements within the kyriarchy, the techniques espoused by intersectionality are often critically useful. If we happen to be a minority in more than one way, our placement often changes based on the interactions between those demographics and the majority, i.e. we have to consider the sum of their parts, and not just them individually. So, please understand as I move on to explain my opinion, that I still support the use of specific identifiers such as the ones found in the Alphabet Soup, because they contextualize the non-consensual power dynamics one is subjected to from multiple angles–including angles from within the Soup (i.e. transphobic cis gay people).

I identify as capital-Q Queer.

On my dating profiles, I’ll often troll people who aren’t woke by refusing to specify what labels from the Alphabet Soup I fit in to. That’s because, depending on who you ask, I fit into nearly all of them.

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Language lesson for trans allies

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“Transgender,” sometimes truncated to simply “trans,” is an adjective. To illustrate some of the more, erm, peculiar applications of the word “trans,” we’re going to use another adjective like “short” or “white” in comparison. I like to call this the “grammar ghetto.”

  • Transgendered

Shiv is a transgendered woman.

Shiv is a shortened woman.

Shiv is a whitened woman.

As far as I know, there is no English dialect where adjectives are turned into verbs in this manner. I’m reasonably confident that regardless of which specific dialect you learned, “transgendered” is just as wrong in all of them as “shortened” when describing a person.

  • Transwoman

Shiv is a transwoman.

Shiv is a shortwoman.

Shiv is a whitewoman.

Once again, adjectives are typically separate from the noun they are modifying. I am not aware of any English dialect where they are merged. Trans women are women who happen to be trans, not something else entirely, as might be suggested by mashing the words together. “Short” and “white” are descriptors, they do not replace my womanhood any more than trans does. “I am a short, white, trans woman.”

  • Transgenders

Shiv and Jane are transgenders.

Shiv and Jane are shorts.

Shiv and Jane are whites.

I’ll give the tiniest amount of wiggle room for this. There are certain contexts where minorities will self-identify in this manner, but it’s typically understood to be dehumanizing when done by majority demographic members. “Short people,” “white people,” “trans people.” Specific to the trans community, the gender-neutral “folk” is typically given a free pass, i.e. “trans folk” or “cis folk.”

Remember that all the rules that typically apply to adjectives in your dialect necessarily apply to the word “trans,” as it too is an adjective.

There is also the kind of cute nickname “enby” (i.e. “NB”) for non-binary people, but I am cautious to use it on a non-binary person without their permission. Others will avoid associations with the binary through the use of terms like “genderqueer/fluid.” In general I don’t see those terms falling prey to the same bizarre grammar ghetto that the word “trans” is treated to–although that may just be that cis folk don’t report on NB/GNC people often.

Go forth and be less awkward in your speech and writing.

-Shiv

Transphobic opposition to Bill C-16 suspiciously similar to Republicans

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Content Notice: Everything that makes you sick about reading HB2 is present in one pundit discussed here.

We get a sense of deja vu when querying Canadian Conservative pundits on Bill C-16, which proposes to add gender identity & expression to the list of protected entities in the Human Rights Act, as well as to the targets of hate crime in the Criminal Code. In a debate on Bill C-16 hosted on CTV, we can see a range of arguments represented in favour and against the bill, including someone who might as well be reading from Governer McCrory’s public statements on HB2: Charles McVety. A transcript of McVety’s garbage opinion below. Ready your bingo cards:

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#Elbowgate, what passes for controversy in Canada

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Here are my opening comments on this debacle:

wat.

Video clips show the prime minister emerging from government benches, walking toward Conservative Whip Gord Brown, whose path was seemingly blocked by a group of NDP members.

Footage shows Trudeau taking Brown’s arm, leading him away, but in the process he backed into NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau.

At one point, the prime minister stood in a face-to-face confrontation with Thomas Mulcair, the NDP leader visibly angry and shouting at Trudeau, calling him “pathetic” twice.

Trudeau apologized for his behaviour, saying he didn’t mean to hurt anyone.

“I had noticed that the Official Opposition Whip seemed to be impeded in his progress down the hall. And I felt that this lacked in respect for Parliament,” Trudeau said.

Members had gathered in the House for an evening vote on a motion to limit debate on Bill C-14. Trudeau made his way toward Brown in an effort to get the vote started.

But pulling colleagues, or any act that could be interpreted as physical aggression, is a parliamentary faux pas. Trudeau said he did what he did because NDP MPs were stalling the vote.

“So I walked over to encourage the member to come through, and indeed offered my arm — extended — to help him come through the gaggle of MPs standing there impeding his progress down the aisle, impeding our ability to move forward with this important vote.”

Conservative MP Peter Van Loan said Trudeau charged across the aisle “with anger fierce in his eyes and face.”

“What took place in this House was physical violence,” NDP MP Niki Ashton said later, adding that people outside would “call it assault.”

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