Stories of trans women victims of violence in Toronto, from Cassandra Do to Alloura Wells: https://this.org/2018/06/14/each-death-is-a-preventable-tragedy/

The journalist whose coverage of Brandon Teena inspired "Boys Don't Cry" evaluates her "insensitive and inaccurate" story: https://www.villagevoice.com/2018/06/20/how-i-broke-and-botched-the-brandon-teena-story/

Four #bikeTO ghost bike rides in little over a week: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/06/15/amid-wave-of-toronto-deaths-cyclists-holding-first-of-four-ghost-bike-rides-friday.html

How landlords, building managers and developers emptied out the Palace Arms, a $700/month rooming house that was one of Toronto's last affordable housing options: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto/article-for-torontos-poor-the-palace-arms-has-been-their-castle-now-a-new/

For years, they've said 80% of trans kids "grow out of it". A new paper takes a critical look at the shockingly flawed studies used to justify the figure. Background and commentary from the indispensable Julia Serano: https://medium.com/@juliaserano/reframing-transgender-desistance-debates-68648a4fd01a

This piece on trans women's inclusion is a really solid introduction to how to think about gender in a feminist, non-essentialist way! https://medium.com/@alysonescalante/how-we-talk-about-trans-inclusion-matters-75e1c6fce5dc

It's funny because in queer theory, gender studies, feminist philosophy, etc., it's a truism that sex and gender are 1) not really separate things, and 2) are socially constructed. Meanwhile in the wilds of Reddit or whatever ppl are like "well you see we're biologically different" like it's the fucking 19th century okay rant over

small brain: gender is a social construct, sex is biological
big brain: biological sex is a social construct too
galaxy brain: the divide between gender identity and sexual orientation is a 20th century Western invention that is colonizing other cultures' gender roles and expressions
cosmic brain: im gay

@nev *throws glitter at your feet* 💃🏽

@nev
This is a really, really good article that reclaims the "radical" in "radical feminism". In particular, how it uses a class conflict to create an identity that includes women both trans and cis but is based in material factors rather than self-identification.

Of course, the comments include the phrase "female adult humans"...

@nev thank you for sharing this!!

@nev *rolls eyes* @ ppl who assume sex is necessarily physical.

(I can have a physical 2. I can have a 2 on a computer screen. I can put them together and still make 22.)

@SoniEx2 would you mind unpacking that? Don't quite get what you mean

@nev the whole "brain sex implies we should be able to observe physical/visual differences in brains" thing. no it doesn't.

I can't see the difference between 0-bits and 1-bits on my HDD, does that mean HDD bits don't exist?

(and yes, I do realize my description of brain sex implies it and gender identity are literally the same thing. that's deliberate.)

@SoniEx2 oh, I see!

Cordelia Fine in _Testosterone Rex_ brings up the possibility "what if the purpose of some sex differences in the brain were to *counteract other differences*?" (https://books.google.ca/books?id=00t8DAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiVjpivj_DbAhVNA6wKHQoWAyUQ6AEILjAB#v=onepage&q=counteract&f=false)

I'm not sure if it's useful to talk about the brain as if it's separate from the rest of the body. You might as well just say "soul", which is not necessarily a bad thing.

@nev the brain is part of the body. just like CPU and RAM are part of a computer.

I'm not sure I get what you're arguing about, here. I don't think "sex differences in the brain" makes sense, because as I said it's a flawed assumption that sex is physical.

(c.f. "thoughts aren't real" arguments)

brain sex is real. it's just as real as gender identity. because brain sex *is* gender identity, at least if we allow thoughts and feelings to "be real". if that makes sense?

@SoniEx2 haha I was going to complain about the limitations of the brain/body-as-computer metaphor but decided to shorten my reply.

I think I get what you're getting at. Would "mental sex" be the same more or less?

@nev "mental sex", "brain sex", "gender identity", "how I'm feeling", etc, yeah I think those are all the same.

@SoniEx2 oh yeah okay!

i think we agree, and can we also agree that gender/sex should be one word except "gex" is taken

@nev I mean I think it's more like gender<->sex (i.e. gender and sex "convert" between eachother) than gender===sex (i.e. gender and sex are exactly the same).

the way that works for brain sex vs gender identity makes them basically equivalent since they're indistinguishable. (like, who's gonna say "my brain sex is genderfluid but my gender identity is male"? no, you usually just say "I'm genderfluid", and use it for both. we treat them the same so I mean why shouldn't they be the same?)

@nev (ofc, just like depression can affect your thought patterns and experiences long-term, gender identity can do the same. so if you somehow were stuck in "male" for too long you'd probably (hypothetically) say "my brain sex is male and my gender identity is male" after a while)

@nev (the depression analogy might not have been the best one and I'm sorry for that)

@SoniEx2 no no, that's all right. have had depression for all my adult life so i get it

@SoniEx2 hmm that's an interesting way to look at it!

Now that I think about it, I see "person's sex is A but gender is B" from cis people more often than from trans people, which is probably why I resist "sex/gender are separate things". I feel like many cis people want to believe that in some fundamental way we still are our assigned sex when it doesn't actually have much ground in reality

@nev this is so wild