#angrily shouting I LOVE MY BOX AND I LOVE WHEN CONCEPTS CONTAIN ONE PURE IDEA AT THE EXCLUSION OF EVERYTHING ELSE

[pocket-deer-boy]

at a certain point, someone's bigotry towards trans people becomes some kind of science denialism where they have to pretend trans people aren't real for their idea of the world to work. like, have a gander at this infographic

Beyond having no idea who the target audience of this infographic is (this reads as a bit too toony and colorful for the more serious sex ed tone of high school biology classes but is far too textually dense and visually noisy and cluttered for younger kids, so really it just feels like it's made or adults to pass around and nod along to work that tells them exactly what they already believe) It's also full of blatant medical misinformation, and states facts in a way that feels completely angry and bitter towards anyone who believes anything else. Like, no, transphobic lion gender infographic. Men CAN lectate even without any hormonal treatments or being trans. I've seen it personally.

It's also interesting to me how it explains sexuality (among other things) as being these incredibly rigid and inflexible categories. Like oh really, asexuals can't have sex? We can't go into nuances of sexual desire, sexual attraction, sexual pleasure and social expectations to perform sex. Like if you're ace and you did sex and weren't enthusiastic about it and never tried it again i guess you're not ace. The harry potter houses model of sexuality: you are one thing, you fit into this one thing, it prescribes how you're supposed to act instead of using it to describe how you actually exist.

This rigidity also becomes obvious when it talks about intersex people as being these exceptions to the rule that don't have to be counted for how gender and sexuality works. And of course, we have to force intersex people into these binary categories instead of, you know, letting them decide for themselves? And of course it ignores any kind of intersex person with any kind of features that can't be written off as an anomaly and an aberration from the norm. Here we start doing science denialism. Here we start pretending certain people's body features aren't worth discussing for the sake of public knowledge. They're only worth bringing up as anomalies, and not as like, people.

I can't fucking get over how jarring the whole image is actually. Like, the really cheerful cartoon furry lions next to this piece of text prescribing the rigidity of existence. Yeah baby, I love being a strong cool lion boy, I love being told everything I'm not allowed to do or be for the sanctity of my gender!

yeah roar!!!

Here's a little section i wanna do more of a deep dive on

Women have two eggs?? what??? the egg-shapd things in the uterus are not the eggs!!!!! what the fuck are you talking about

This particular part stands out to me. Like, obviously the purpose of this infographic is not to tell you how bodies work, but to insist that there's a correct and an incorrect way for bodies to work, and that people outside of what it describes do not exist. It's obvious because it won't even show you what a uterus, what a vagina, or what boobs usually look like, like any decent diagram whose purpose is science education would. It's obvious because it straight up lies to you about how periods work, and tells you that having a period is somehow intrinsically tied to being a woman.

Like, no. Obviously. Trans can men experience menstruation at any point in transition, and trans women can experience other common parts of periods if they've been on hrt for long enough. Periods are not some kind of woman exclusive thing, it's not purely reliant on having a uterus or having certain hormones. It's not gender dependent. It depends on multiple features of one's body. It's a very basic fact of transition, hormones change how your biology works no matter what features you have. To imply none of this is true is denying very very basic facts about how a lot of people's bodies work, simply based on some insistence that those people aren't real and if we simply look away we can all pretend trans women aren't real. It's digging your head in the sand, it's having lived looking at the shadows on the wall your whole life, being told something new, and going right back into your cave and angrily shouting at everyone that the shadows are real, the shadows are ALL that is real, and though I may have glimpsed things that lie outside of it, those things aren't real because I personally can safely ignore facts about how the world works and go about my day.