#do we really need One More social ... what's one more ...

[odettecarotte]

I was thinking about this just yesterday. From 2009-2017, one of my "talents" in social justice spaces was to share how my own racist delusions had harmed me and others. I was "so brave" for sharing these ugly truths about myself and opening the way for other white people to do the same.

But...I was really good at it because I'm simply AMAZING at telling everyone what a piece of shit I am! I do it at any opportunity! Shame, shame, shame!!!

I love how Devon labels this a fawn response. The dark side of fawning is lying and manipulation. We fawn in face of a threat. And what is the threat, exactly? Hurting a comrade, or being yelled at for hurting a comrade?

It's hard to rely on each other when we're scared of each other, or when those with more power are basically showing up with trauma responses and personality disorders out the wazoo.

What would it look like to show up to organizing with our best attempts at secure attachment?

I have been heartened by two friends doing persistent organizing to pressure the US government to stop funding and facilitating the genocide of the Palestinian people. They have had typical drama within their orgs (someone using a leadership role to further their own agenda). In each case, this person was swiftly removed/relocated, and everyone refocused on the actual mission within, like, a week.

We need to trust each other to work together. The real threat is the people in the US government who are killing Palestinians, Iranians and Yemenis in this war, who are deporting and torturing migrants, who are softly killing their "own people" through cuts to benefits that provide housing, food and medicine. (And yes, yes, we all have a capitalist in our heads but let's not be so internal and metaphorical for a second.)

It is possible to work together, we need each other, it is possible!!!

The conversations about accountability & apologies that we've been having in social justice circles these last few years have basically trained everybody to fawn.

We've been telling people that if they are accused of any wrongdoing or of hurting anybody's feelings, it is their obligation to apologize immediately, and never to hedge, disagree, or to explain their rationale what they've done.

In their apology, we expect them to articulate every single thing that they have done that was damaging in the strongest language possible and to declare outright that they have harmed someone, often multiple groups of people, even if they are not sure of the impact (or could not even possibly be sure).

If a person's apology is anything but immediate and entirely self-excoriating, we accuse the person of downplaying the damage they have done, failing to be accountable, and manipulating others.

In this way, we've made it impossible for a person to ever take their own side lest that be taken itself as a form of wrongdoing. We have trained our fellow social-justice-minded people to believe that if they do anything but worsen the case against themselves, they are being irresponsible.

I say we, in all of this, because I have partaken in all of this rhetoric, made these kinds of criticism, given accused people this type of advice.

And I have followed it myself, often to a damaging effect.

I have taken responsibility for problems in which I truly did not believe I played a part, I've overstated the damage that I've done so as not to risk understating it, I've ascribed malice to my intentions when I knew it wasn't there, I've agreed with people's most negative, bad-faith narratives about conflicts involving me that they were not even present for, offered up information about myself that was not a third party's business in the name of transparency, apologized for things I haven't done -- and in doing all of this, I have denied my loved ones the opportunity to really hear me about what I was going through and my motivations when I was in conflict with them, things that any true friend or close associate would obviously want to hear about if they cared about me.

This aim of giving the perfect apology and taking perfect accountability has been nothing but an isolating force in my life, because it has barred me from openly entering into necessary conflict with people when our needs were incompatible or they had hurt me just as much as I'd hurt them. The fear of being a manipulative, unaccountable DARVO-er has led me to roll onto my back and expose my belly, falling over myself with panicked apologies and the most unflattering information possible cast in the least explicable light, almost outright begging for others to become angrier at me and believing that it was only way I could ever possibly be accepted back.

We've drilled into people that the way to be good and responsible is to allow people to view us as negatively as possible, to even arm others with information that will confirm that point of view, and to never insert our own perspective or needs on the matter at all.

And yeah, there are a lot of shitty people out there who dodge accountability easily because their power ensconces them from any consequences. but the primary problem with that was never that they wrote a shitty notesapp apology that used the unforgivable phrase "I am sorry if you felt XYZ." The real problem was that there was no community that held enough influence to hold them to account, and for their victims there weren't ever adequate supports or protections.

instead of addressing any of that in a remotely systematic way, we have taken to picking apart every accused person's every word and deed for evidence of inner moral failure and created a culture in which we think we can determine a person's safety by how artfully they put words together when they are under threat. and what do you know, plenty of bad faith actors and conflict avoidant cowards and people who just dont understand what they are even being accused of can do that just fine.

[cherrygarcia-07]

all of my fics have been a little wordy and a little hefty lately so here’s something light and fluffy and funny for a little breather :3

Baby Burglar // Spencer Reid🧸

Synopsis: Spencer Reid is absolutely wrapped around his baby girl’s little finger, but he learns he really needs to loosen up when she comes home from a shopping trip with a surprise hidden in her stroller.

Pairing: girl dad! spencer reid x wife! reader

Genre: pure fluff!!

Word Count: 2.7k

Notes/Tags: nothing really! baby is under 1 yrs old, also unnamed for your benefit :3 theft (not serious), brief brief talk of pregnancy. I think that’s it. Spencer is just a big old silly who loves his baby girl more than anything in the world- and he infodumps like crazy to her :3

masterlist // if you enjoy pls reblog!! it helps so much!!

———————————————————————————🧸—————————————————————————

“Is she almost ready, Spence?” You called from the hallway as you pulled on your shoes.

“Almost! Just give us two seconds!” He shouted back as he put a tiny pair of mismatched socks on your daughter for the hundredth time that she was sure to kick off again the second he turned his back.

“It’s a little chilly out, make sure she has a cardigan.”

“Already picked out.” Spencer smiled as he picked up the little cardigan laid out on his lap. It was a baby blue sweater with flower shaped buttons and two cute cartoon cows embroidered on its pockets.

“Do you know what animal this is?” He asked your baby girl who was currently preoccupied pulling at loose threads on the rug on the floor. It didn’t matter that she was far too young to answer, Spencer just loved talking to her about anything and everything. He loved how she babbled in response, how her wide eyes stared up at him and a gummy smile grew on her face at the sound of his voice. “That’s right it’s a cow. And what sound does a cow make?”

You heard a low ‘moo’ in the cadence of your husband’s voice rumble through the house, something between a sigh and a laugh tumbling out of you as you packed your daughter’s stroller. Figuring he was going to be a little while longer you made your way up to her bedroom, hovering just out of eyesight so you could listen in.

“Did you know that cows have best friends?” He said as he began gently pulling her little arms through the sleeves. “They’re very social animals and studies show they’re a lot happier and under far less stress when they’re with specific members of their herd. That’s kind of how I feel when I’m with you and Mommy.” He added as he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

A smile pinched at your lips as you heard her chatter something in response, her airy voice spilling out of the room.

“And you know what else? Cows love music, too.” Spencer continued as he fastened her buttons. “They hear a higher range of frequencies than we do so farm noise can be overwhelming for them. Studies show they don’t really have a preferred genre but they seem to be quite fond of classical music. A bit like Daddy, huh?”

You loved how much he loved spending time with her. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t talk back, nothing made him happier than to sit and ramble about his day or tell his daughter fun facts about every topic under the sun. He’d been doing it ever since you were pregnant, laying down next to you with one hand laid carefully over your stomach while he recited children’s stories to her, complete with silly voices and facts about the authors. He’d read countless articles and books about the benefits of communication and developing their language skills and that was the reason he always gave you for it, but you knew it was simply that before she was even born she was his best friend in the whole world.

“You two ready?” You asked softly as you stepped into the room.

Spencer gasped dramatically as your daughter’s eyes widened in excitement at the sight of you. It was something that never failed to make your heart melt.

“Look who it is!” He mused, standing up with your baby in his arms as she squealed and clumsily reached her arms out to you.

“Well if it isn’t my two favourite people in the world!” You beamed as you took her in your hold and kissed her chubby cheeks. Beside you, Spencer cleared his throat, not-so-nonchalantly turning his head to the side and displaying his own cheek to you. You rolled your eyes at his theatrics but kissed him all the same, much to his delight as his face warmed immediately.

Not long after, the three of you were out and headed to the supermarket, although your daughter hadn’t stayed in her stroller for long. Her father was seemingly allergic to not having her in his arms at any given moment and so he walked with one hand holding her safely on his hip and the other lazily pushing the pram in front of you. You trailed slightly behind, watching as the two of them babbled back and forth like a daddy-daughter talk show, Spencer bouncing her on his hip every once in a while to make her giggle.

“You know butterflies taste with their feet?” He’d said at one point after one had fluttered past. “They have what’s called chemoreceptors on their feet that help them tell if the plant they’ve landed on is good to eat or not. Can you imagine that?”

The walk to the supermarket continued exactly like that, a picture of bliss as Spencer talked her little ears off about anything he set his eyes on as you chuckled happily behind them (and took a thousand pictures of the two of them to send to Penelope). Eventually when you reached the store, he pouted as you sat her back in her stroller.

“Can I at least push her around the store?” He grumbled.

“Would it kill you if you didn’t?” You teased, cocking a brow at him- although secretly it was far easier to have him distracted while you shopped as he was always surprisingly indecisive about what he wanted.

“I think it might.” He sighed sarcastically, one hand alright curling around the handle before you gave in.

The three of you made your way around the store, you pushing the shopping cart and Spencer pushing your daughter in her stroller as she kicked her little legs. There was a slight chaos that came with grocery shopping with a baby; stopping every couple of aisles to pull on the socks that she kept peeling off as if she had a personal vendetta against them; crouching in front of her to soothe her uncomfortable crying when you passed through the frozen aisles; chasing after the trail of toys and random objects being tossed over the side of her seat in boredom- but you wouldn’t have it any other way. It was noisy, it was messy, but it was yours.

However at one point as you browsed the produce section you realised it was significantly quieter- too quiet. Suspicion rising, you looked around only to find that your husband and daughter were no longer there. Humming to yourself you made your way to where you knew they’d snuck off to, the aisle Spencer seemed to have a magnet built into him that drew him in now that he had a baby to spoil: the toy aisle.

“What are you doing?”

Spencer’s hand froze where it hovered above a stuffed animal, red and blue lights seemingly flashing all around as he slowly turned to look up at you watching with your hands on your hips.

“N-nothing.” He stumbled, clearing his throat and straightening up where he stood, very clearly not doing nothing.

“Really?” Your eyes darted between the toy and his nervous expression. “Because it looks like you’re trying to buy her her millionth toy this week alone.”

Spencer gulped, the bright light of the imaginary interrogation room bulb pulsing down on him. “I think ‘millionth’ is a vast exaggeration,” he stuttered, “if we’re counting accurately it’s actually been-“

“Spencer.”

“Yes?” He squeaked.

“Walk away.” You stifled a chuckle at the puppy dog eyes he flashed you immediately, his bottom lip threatening that child-like pout you found so endearing. You weren’t trying to be the strict parent- really you weren’t. In fact you were prone to spoiling your little girl rotten yourself, it’s just that Spencer went overboard like his life depended on it and quite frankly you weren’t sure a thousand variations of stuffed animals was exactly what she needed at this stage in her life.

“She’d love it.” He sulked.

“She’s half asleep.” You smirked as he followed your gaze to your daughter’s half closed eyes, her head bouncing slightly against the side of her stroller as she dozed off, clearly unable to care less about the toy.

“But you didn’t see the way she looked at it earlier!” God, he is relentless.

“Honey, I love how enthusiastic you are about giving her everything she wants, really I do, but she’s a baby. She looks at the ceiling fan in our bedroom the exact same way.” You tilted your head sympathetically, though you were thoroughly amused on the inside.

“Fine, fine. I guess you’re right.” Spencer sighed, defeated. He surrendered, backing away from the shelf and picking up the blanket which had at some point fell to the floor like a white flag. “But next time I’m buying her something.”

“Oh I’m sure you will.” You said, planting a light kiss on his cheek and pulling him away to continue your shopping trip.

A little while later and the three of you were back at home, shopping bags dumped rather haphazardly by the front door as you took a breather. You’d fought to keep your daughter awake so she could nap at home, but it just wasn’t happening. Her little socks were hanging off of her feet again as her legs slung out over the front of the stroller, her head tucked against her shoulder as she snored softly into her cardigan. She looked so angelic you found yourself not even caring about the impending chaos that would come when she woke up. You crouched down in front of the stroller ready to unbuckle her when something caught your eye, tucked behind her back like it was hiding. Something brown and fluffy with a little bow tie.

“Spencer?” You called, instantly dubious.

“Yeah?” He called back cheerily from where he’d begun carrying your bags into the kitchen.

“Did you buy this behind my back?” You pulled the teddy bear out from behind her, careful not to wake her up.

“What are you talking about?” He materialised in the doorway suddenly, brows pinched in confusion.

With an incredulous look on your face you held the teddy bear up in the air for him to see, tentatively holding it by its paw between your thumb and pointer finger as if it were evidence.

“What is-“ he began spluttering, “I did not buy her that. I put it back like you said, I swear.”

“Then where did it come from?” You questioned, equally confused at the magic presence of this odd bear. “Oh my god.”

“What?”

“I think she stole it.” You declared, eyes falling back on the deceptive little sleeping angel still curled up in her seat, blanket in hand.

“What?” Spencer echoed, voice several octaves higher and eyes widened beyond belief. “How? When?”

“She must’ve swiped it from the shelf when you weren’t looking.” You laughed, picturing her innocently grabbing at the little bear and tucking it under her arm. Spencer wasn’t so thrilled, in fact he looked white as a ghost. “Spence?”

“We have to give it back.” He croaked. “Or go back and pay for it.”

“What are you talking about, Spence, it’s a stupid teddy bear.” You stood as he began pacing the room, hand tucked under his chin like he did when he was overthinking.

“It’s theft is what it is!” He choked, brows shooting up so high you thought they’d fly off of his head entirely.

Biting back a smile you planted your hands firmly on his shoulders, stopping his pacing and forcing him to look at you. “It’s a stupid little teddy bear. She swiped it accidentally. No one’s going to miss it especially not at a huge supermarket.”

“I can’t believe my daughter stole something.” He muttered, ignoring you completely. “I’m an FBI agent and my daughter stole something.”

“Okay well they’re hardly going to come breaking down our door, are they?” You teased, setting the bear back down in her lap.

“We have to go back and pay for it at least.” He met your eyes, completely serious.

“You want to go all the way back to the store to pay-“ you paused to crouch down and check the tag on its fuzzy ear, “five dollars and ninety nine cents?”

“Yes!” He yelped. “We’re setting a bad example to her if we don’t. Not to mention it’s theft which I’m sure I don’t need to remind you is completely illegal!”

“I don’t think she’s going to grow up to become a bank robber or a car thief over this, honey.”

“Well let’s hope not.” He scoffed.

“She’s not going to remember this at all. She doesn’t even know what happened.”

“You’re underestimating just how much passive information our brains store. Especially for a child her age- what seems insignificant to us can actually be the building blocks of-“

“Spence.” You sighed, exasperated, stepping forward and placing a hand on his arm to steady him. “You’re catastrophising.”

“I can’t help it.” He swallowed, calming down a little. “It’s the principle. It makes me feel… icky.” He muttered, making you huff a breathy laugh at his childish choice of words.

“But look at her,” you cooed, turning back to look at your daughter still in her stroller. At some point in the panic she’d looped an arm around the teddy bear’s neck, holding it against her face and cuddling it in her sleep. It’s bow tie was a similar shade of blue to the cardigan she wore, it’s brown fur wild and adorably messy just like Spencer’s- honestly it seemed like it fit right in with the family. “You wanted to spoil her, right? Look how much she loves it already. And when she wakes up you can play with it together and tell her everything you know about teddy bears and whatever else you two want to babble about, yeah?”

He sighed again, taking in the peaceful sight before him. He couldn’t deny the warm feeling blooming in his chest as he watched the way she tucked the bear under her chin and absentmindedly nestled into it, her tiny fingers disappearing into its curly fur.

“Alright.” He whispered eventually, eyes still fixed on the cherubic girl. “But I’m still going back tomorrow to pay. Maybe they won’t be so harsh if I show them my badge and- what, what are you laughing it?” He turned to you, brows furrowed again as his mouth hang agape.

You giggled behind your hand, shaking your head at the image of your husband, your nerdy little Spencer Reid, flashing his FBI badge at the supermarket cashiers, teddy bear in hand and a look of complete seriousness in his big doe eyes. God, you adored him and his dear, dorky brain.

“Nothing, nothing. I just love you.” You grinned up at him, laughter threatening to spill again as the confusion still lingered on his face.

“I love you too?” He answered, still unsure what part of his super serious plan had broken you.

At that moment, your baby girl began stirring, stretching and yawning in her stroller as big as her small limbs would let her. Instantly, Spencer’s whole mood shifted as his face lit up and he sprang into action, unbuckling her and lifting her into his arms as he peppered her with soft kisses. You watched as you had that morning at the way he doted on her, completely and utterly wrapped around her finger. You saw it in the dopey smile he wore without realising whenever he looked at her, the way he made everything he possibly could into a conversation topic just so he had an excuse to spend time with her even though she couldn’t talk back yet, how he already cared so much about her future and who she would become that he let it make a loving little fool out of him sometimes.

As hectic as the days with the two of them could be, whether it was something as small as trying to leave the house on time or something as silly as a meltdown over her hypothetical petty theft career, you wouldn’t change it for the world. And you knew as you watched him sway her in his arms as he prattled about nothing in particular that he felt exactly the same way.

-

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

Someone requested „unhinged life advice“ and I will try my best to provide some - but firstly, and at the risk of sounding like a buzzkill, I need to say something very annoying: 

A lot of the things that’ll make you feel happier and make your life better are - frustratingly - very, very hinged. They’re just the things you expect them to be: try to eat at least some veggies, fruit and fiber. Try to drink enough water. Go to bed early enough to get eight hours of sleep. Try to move your body, for example by taking walks or exercising. Avoid alcoholic drinks (altogether if possible but at least in excess). Quit smoking. Try to do at least some things in your free time that are not just passive consumption of content and instead challenge your brain, like learning a language or doing puzzles or writing short stories. Try to have at least some pleasant social interactions, ideally even in person. 

These pieces of advice aren’t fun. They also aren’t easy. I think we are so fascinated by the concept of „unhinged life advice“ because we are tired. We hope for something easier, for a magic quick fix, for a „this one little thing changed everything“ - while in reality building new habits needs patience and determination and time. 

So, I think the best pieces of „unhinged life advice“ are the ones that help to build these habits! I’ll share some of them. I’ll also throw in some pieces of advice that are just unhinged in the sense of „weirdly specific“ (since that’s another possible interpretation). 

Without further ado: 

If putting chicken nuggets in a salad makes you actually eat a salad you otherwise would never eat, then chicken nuggets are a healthy choice. 

If you struggle with eating fruit because the texture is so unpredictable, try frozen fruit (eaten straight out of the freezer). Frozen fruit has a predictable texture! 

If frozen fruit hurts your tummy or you don’t like that texture, either, here are some more ideas: make smoothies, or purée fruit and mix it into yoghurt, or purée fruit and add it to tomato sauce (sounds weird but a little sweetness can work great in tomato sauce), or bake fruit into muffins (if you cut them up very finely or blend them into the dough, they are often barely noticeable) 

Moving your body doesn’t have to look like exercise. Going on a walk (maybe to look for pretty stones on the sidewalks? or even just to get a coffee!) counts! Dancing to your favorite song (even alone in your room) counts too! Crawling on the floor like a dog (just for the silliness of it, which is also great for your brain) also counts! 

Sleep rituals can help a lot and they don’t need to be fancy! Just do the same thing before you go to bed and over time your brain will associate it with getting sleepy and calm down once you do it. This could be something like making a cup of chamomile tea, listening to soft piano music, praying or meditating, writing down one thing you’re grateful for etc., but also something whimsy like saying good night to your favorite plushie! 

A great way to get some steps in and also challenge your brain is to go to museums. If you feel like you are not the museum type because you don’t „get“ art, try this little trick: just don’t try to get it. Don’t focus on finding the meaning or find hidden symbolism for now. Instead, just try to find three things you like about the art piece. This doesn’t have to be anything smart or deep. It can be something like „I like the blue color the artist used“ or „I like how fluffy the clouds look“. This approach will help you relax and actually learn to appreciate the art… which is what you need to do in order to allow your brain to look for meanings

There’s probably at least one vegetable you think you hate but you really just hate the way your mom prepares them (no offense to your mom). It can be a fun challenge to revisit some foods you decided you hate as a kid and to see if that’s still true. 

Allow yourself to be bored. „I need to look at two screens simultaneously at all times to avoid a thought from occurring“ is not as funny in real life as it sounds as a meme. Your brain needs to be bored sometimes. Your thoughts need to wander sometimes. If that’s hard, then start by just doing certain things more intentionally: do not watch YouTube while eating. Just eat. Do not scroll through TikTok while on the toilet. Just poop. Your brain will reward you for actually getting some time to sort through and process stuff. Even if it’s just while pooping. 

Allow yourself to gameify those boring adult tasks if that works for you. Pretend to be on a cooking show while chopping onions. Sing a silly song about laundry while doing laundry. Beat your own record for speed-cleaning. Give those dishes a nice pool party in your sink. 

Reading of all kinds still counts as reading. Yes, it can be a rewarding challenge to finally finish that bestselling novel that is totally outside of your genres or interests, or that classic piece of literature that everyone should know. But if it’s too overwhelming and kinda stops you from reading altogether, then just put it aside and read something that’s actually fun for now! It can be a graphic novel or a children’s book or fanfiction or Wikipedia articles, too. 

Make lists. I may be biased because I love lists and make lists for everything (I even have a list categorizing all my lists…) but lists can be such a great tool! Any task becomes much more satisfying when you can cross it off a list.

When people say things like „someone should empty the dishwasher“ or „we should take out the trash today“, they often mean „I want you to empty the dishwasher“ or „I want you to take out the trash“. They’re not even being confusing on purpose or playing mind games, they just assume that wording it so indirectly is nicer and more polite.

If you safely can, then go to Pride events (and queer spaces in general) in small towns or rural areas! They’re often the ones who need support the most. And since they’re smaller, they can also be more accessible (in terms of less noise, less crowded etc.)

I don’t think this one is rooted in science but I’m a big fan of having little comfort items. Just little „emotional support trinkets“ or lucky charms you can carry with you and look at or fidget with when you get nervous. Of course it’s important to not fall into overconsumption with that (impulsively purchasing lots of items you then do not end up actually using or even just purchasing them for the thrill of purchasing), but, if done intentionally (only picking a limited number of items that you actually form an emotional attachment and assign personal meaning to), I believe it can be a simple way to boost happy feelings. It can also work well as your own little „secret“ Pride item! If you don’t feel safe or comfortable wearing rainbow accessories but want something to affirm your identity for yourself, it can be a great idea to assign your own meaning to something totally random. Good way to train your creativity too! 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[seewetter]

"I still think it was irresponsible for people to put so much faith into hormone based gender affirming care before this study existed."

There seems to be a misunderstanding: this is not the first time medical studies have shown gender affirming care to be valuable and good.

This is just a study that Republicans, in the midst of attempts at making such hormones illegal for transgender people, had ordered.

I agree that this being funded and supervised by anti-transgender Republicans can make the information a bit more convincing for people who may be on the fence about hormone use, but the entire American medical establishment (!) has been in unanimous support of hormone treatments for years. Unless you believe that only Republican politicians can scientifically prove things, these treatments have been scientifically proven to be the right move for decades.

"And they were just giving it (or worse, selling it) to children who were already marginalized and vulnerable."

There is some disagreement here on this website about how we should address people who, like with this sentence, are expressing a fear of children accessing hormones.

One school of thought suggests that when discussing the issue, we should simplify things and basically say "nobody is just giving or selling it to kids". And they have a point, because most of the time, if some kid says "I'm transgender", the medical establishment responds by suggesting therapy, not hormones. And if you want hormones, they will put you through at minimum 18 months of therapy just to make sure you're *really* sure and *really* not making a mistake. And the experience most trans people have with this process is not "wow, I'm being listened to" but rather the experience of talking to someone who doesn't understand, doesn't want to understand and is really trying to talk you out of it.

Another school of thought suggests that we shouldn't simplify, because there are supposedly some cases where transgender kids do actually get hormones. But even so, nobody breathes a word when children who aren't transgender get *their* hormones from the doctor. That isn't cause for alarm, even though these are the exact same substances, often in the same doses and also often for non-medical reasons. Now I'm sure that this will lead to big long debates with people trying to point out why these situations are different and why we should all panic about these substances being given to kids but only if those kids are trans. But all that doesn't change the fact that these concerns were raised by people who didn't care one tiny bit when the kids were not trans. It didn't matter then, because the concerns are not about medicine and the science behind it and the health risks it can cause. These concerns are about gender politics, about fears of a topsy-turvy world where the nice little social groups we are trying to force people into or keep people away from are becoming open enough that people can leave or enter them at will. Hormones used in this way take us a step closer to that world and so people want to stop this at all costs.

The risk of irreversible changes won't go away because Republicans published this study. That risk will go away when people stop emphasizing how vulnerable children are and instead decide that actually funding research to make these changes easier and more reversible is worth their time and money. Similarly, any damage caused from people changing the group they belong to can't be fixed from hurting people that do this. It can only be fixed by figuring out how to let people change groups without damage occurring. I have no idea what your concerns about menopause are, but if they are medical concerns, there will be technological solutions that need to be researched and funded. That is the permanent solution to this constant bickering on this issue, it will put the arguments to rest. Same goes for all complains about social downsides. Think constructively, and you don't need to be opposed to these things and can see that they cause no harm.

Two years after being tasked with commissioning a review of medical evidence surrounding gender-affirming care for trans youth, Utah’s own state health department has concluded that trans healthcare bans “cannot be justified.” The Republicans who commissioned the study aren’t too happy about it.

Back in 2023, Utah Governor Spencer Cox signed a bill that placed an indefinite “moratorium” on doctors prescribing gender-affirming care like hormone therapy and puberty blockers to trans youth. That bill ordered the Utah Department of Health and Human Services to compile their report in order to produce recommendations for the state government on whether or not to lift the moratorium.

This week, the department delivered their long-awaited, over 1,000-page report — which is dated August 6, 2024 — to Utah lawmakers. The report’s authors found that “the consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric GD [gender dysphoria] patients.”

The authors added that “the evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer.” Trans youth who had received gender-affirming care were within the bounds of normal, non-pathological ranges for these conditions.

y’all this is huge. please don’t “water is wet” all over it! I understand that we all already know this… The point is that the world doesn’t know or care or believe and so these studies really fucking matter!

[yushi-ni]

LOVEE ur dating oh sion post!! make one about riku/yushi pleasee or any of nct wish members🤍🤍

𝖽𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗇𝗀 ෆ NCT RIKU ෆ

꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱ masterlist

dating riku ღ established relationship, fluff & more mature content. mentions of pda - kisses - 18+ card games - food. this is for fun and entertainment purposes only, don’t take it too seriously!!!!

hiis loves, this one got requested so many times so i hope y’all like it!!! please let me know what you think hihihi big hugs 🤍🤍🤍

──୨ৎ────────୨ৎ────────୨ৎ──

⟡ dating riku is honestly the closest thing one can get to a fairytale kind of romance. (without the pretty dresses - castles and horses) every little girl has dreamed of their own knight in shining armour and you might actually have full filled that childhood dream. riku is what many would consider; too good to be true. but his love and adoration for you is just pure and true. he has flaws, ofc, every person has flaws but out of all the people you have ever encountered; riku is one of a kind.

⟡ riku is brought up in a loving and warm home. he’s super close with his mom and sister, his whole life he’s been surrounded by womanly love and affection. even though he’s a guy, he has lots of understanding for and about the opposite gender. his mother’s kindness has definitely spread over to him. he listens - communicates - speaks words followed by actions and most of all he loves and cares deeply.

⟡ we all know riku is very affectionate, not just through physical touch but also through acts of service and words of affirmation. he’s definitely not one to step down from a little pda. he’s not ashamed nor does he feel like he needs to hide his affection for you when you’re out. yes he’ll be considerate of your surroundings and won’t push himself onto you when the time and place is just not there but in a comfortable setting he will definitely always make himself present. will somehow always have his arm around you, doesn’t even always realise it himself when his arm is lazily wrapped around your middle or neck. his hands have their fixed spot on your thigh and let’s not forget about the classic back hugs here and there

⟡ he’s obsessed with your lips. his own are puckered at all times whenever he gets the chance. will sneak many kisses, small or big, since he claims he needs it to get himself going. very big on ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ kisses. doesn’t really matter if he’s just running out to quickly get something at the corner store or if he is leaving for work; he always makes sure to kiss you goodbye before he leaves. same with ‘hello’ kisses, doesn’t matter if he’s walking into a room with other people around, he will always make way towards you first, leaning down to peck your lips with a small “hi baby” before he greets everyone around him as well.

⟡ speaking of pda & kisses; make outs happen quite often actually.. not when your whole friend group is around but if it’s ‘just’ sion or one of your besties, he’s not social distancing his lips from yours. he’s not scared to lock lips with you when his hyung is around. he couldn’t care less. ok he won’t push his tongue down your throat, but a little kiss never hurt nobody hehe

⟡ riku is the type of bf to put lots of thought into your dates. yes he enjoys a spontaneous ice cream run or a cafe date but he lives for the actual ‘real’ dates. the one where you take your time to dress up and get ready, looking your absolute prettiest ever (he thinks you’re breath taking at all times tho) completely with a new dress and all - matching your outfits etc etc. taking you to a new restaurant, a cozy wine bar or a rooftop (private) lounge. he believes these kind of dates are necessary for a relationship to be successful. the feeling of a very thoughtful - planned moment together and the excitement that comes with it. you’ll take turns picking out places, making reservations and setting up a dress code. keeping it a surprise for the other up until arrival!!! it’s honestly some of your fav things you do together

⟡ lowkey a very ‘traditional’ relationship type of guy. he will insist on paying the bill, every single time. it doesn’t matter how big or small, he wants to pay. will not even give you the time to take out your card. he thinks it’s his ‘duty’ to take care of you (in a loving way, not in a ‘ur my possession’ way) sometimes, really really sometimes, he’ll let you pay. but only because he wants you to stop nagging him about it. he doesn’t care, even if he had $3 left to his name; it would be spent on you. it’s just something he wants to do for you.

⟡ couple rings - couple bracelets - matching shoes - phone cases - keychains - socks ???? whatever it is, he loves it. just lowkey, he’s not wearing everything at once because that kinda ruins the whole idea of it. but he’ll always make sure to wear his ring, it was his gift to you for your 100 days anniversary (a big thing in korea) so it’s special to him. and it always goes with every outfit he wears. a win is a win!!!

⟡ he has lots of nicknames for you. some very interesting ones.. that make you question the creative capacity of his brain. but his favs and most stable ones are definitely; my love and princess. at first you had to get used to him calling you princess on random occasions.. a little new to the name (valid) but it came so naturally. you are a princess in his eyes and the most fun part is that over time the nickname became a very normalised name for you. he used to call you princess not just to your face but also when he was talking about you to his friends so almost naturally they picked up on it and it wasn’t; “when is yn coming?” but- “when’s your princess coming?” (ps. an; not in a weird way pls take it lightly!!!! people who have watched the100 get the vibe hehe) when it’s the bunch of you hanging out together and you’re in the kitchen getting some last snacks while the movie starts playing, you’ll hear the boys all unitedly calling for you from the couch. “princess!!!!!!! it’s starting”

⟡ riku will always be in touch with you, one way or the other. if it’s not actual texts, it will be memes in your ig dms - tiktoks - even random snapchat videos throughout the day with ‘vlog’ updates on what he’s doing. there won’t ever be a day that he’s not in your notifications. (bare minimum if you ask him) he doesn’t feel the need to text you 24/7 but he does let you know that you’re on his mind even when he’s just scrolling through tiktoks. will send you vids of 2 capybara’s playing with a; “it’s us”. he also likes phone calls but he won’t dramatically fall to the floor if you can’t talk over the phone for one night because you’re busy or just too tired to talk

⟡ he will make playlists for you every now and then with different songs for different reasons. one would be full of songs that he simply likes, just casual music, good vibes etc etc. some songs might have a specific kind of genre that he’s really into and just wants to share with you!!! but there’s also the special playlists; the songs that remind him of you. songs with lyrics that speak the words he wish he could sing to you at any time of the day. songs that remind him of you and him together or maybe future dreams etc etc. it will be a random sunday afternoon, riku is at work and you’re just chilling at home, enjoying your own company, when his name pops up with a newly shared playlist

⟡ he’s not necessarily the type to get jealous easily. at least, he doesn’t show it. there’s definitely moments he wished he could just snatch you away from others but he’ll never really show his jealous feelings unless you pull it out of him. he just gaslights himself that it’s ok (fake it till you make it!!!) but he can get a little sulky when it’s just the two of you again. won’t speak the truth out loud but you know your bf and this switch in his behaviour. sometimes you just talk to him (more force him to talk to you) about the matter but other days you feel a little more .. playful. teasing him about it because you both know you’re happy and good together, there’s no need to worry or doubt each other’s love. so you try to keep these kind of things light and a little teasing never hurt nobody hehe. and tbh.. why won’t you pull his strings a little bit. who knows what fun that might bring (wink)

⟡ shares his food with you. doesn’t matter what it is, his spoon automatically goes to your mouth. awaiting your reaction when you take a bite and happily continue eating when you nod and hum in satisfaction!!! sometimes when you go out for food he’ll purposely pick flavors and things he knows you like so he can share his own with you. he likes sweet drinks and is still getting used to the bitter taste of coffee (he just drinks it for the caffeine) and your sweet tooth might not be as big as his but you’ll always gladly take a bite, the sweet gesture always makes your heart so happy. and obviously you share yours with him as well!!! even if it’s that same damn coffee you always order; he’ll take that sip as if he has never tasted anything like it before!

⟡ ok hear me out. i don’t think he’s a horny dog that needs to be taken care of everyday, twice a day, 10 days a week but i definitely think he likes bedroom time with you. not even just the sexual stuff. he loves waking up next to you whenever he has a day off and you’re sleeping over at his dorm. there’s nothing better.. welllll not a lot of things at least because he definitely considers himself lucky that the two maknaes are living in the other dorm. he has a green card from yushi whenever you sleep over. and he sure as hell makes use of it. morning gymnastics??? yes ma’am sign him up. it’s actually almost like drugs to him. he absolutely loves it, there’s no better way to start his day. (and you can’t disagree ofc)

⟡ riku orders food and coffee to your house whenever he’s at work. if he has to leave early in the morning while you’re still asleep, he’ll get coffee delivered to your home as soon as you wake up. or if he has to work late and you’re already off work or whatever, he will order food for you to make sure you’re eating well even though he’s not there with you.

⟡ he gets you flowers on the most random days. in his opinion there’s no need to have a reason or occasion to give someone flowers. love and affection is enough to get a special person a pretty bouquet of flowers. he knows your favs and has the lady at the shop create something new with it every single time. there has never been a bouquet you didn’t like!!! every single one is a piece of art and you’re always lowkey sad when they’re slowly dying. he also loves that you take out one flower before you throw them out. so you can keep it in your little journal collection. you did it the very first time he got you flowers and it just stuck with you ever since. this way the memories never die!!!

⟡ he’s very serious about his life with you. you can tell by the way he talks about his future and goals. he’s very vocal about his dreams for when he gets older. the kind of house he would like to buy, a home for you and him. the kind of lifestyle he would like to have so he can live happily and without any regrets. you’re his muse and motivation. you’re genuinely the one that can make his hardest days more enjoyable just with your presence and good energy. he knows that both life and a relationship come with ups and downs but he’s ready to fight for you when it’s needed. you’re his person and there’s genuinely nothing that can make him feel more happy and loved like you. he knows what he wants and it’s you and him forever till the end of time.

[joejhang]

I was never a Kevin hater until we found out he knew about Jean being raped, dismissed those rapes and said he was never a victim because he gave the Ravens "no reason to". I understand why he had to leave the nest, I can even understand HOW he did it because he was desperate. I do NOT understand the comments about Jean being raped. Almost like he's blaming him (very Thea-esque, "up to your old tricks"). Even Jeremy didn't want to hear one more word about it from him.

I also feel like in general you have a distorted vision if who Kevin is in canon, like your statement that "Kevin and Andrew are literally best friends", when Nora said Kevin has no friends in canon, that it'll take years into their PRO career to form any sort of actual friendship with Andrew and Neil. Nora said the closest thing Kevin has to a "friend" rn is Thea, and we've all seen how detached they can be from each other. And that any sort of relationship he's in will have to account for his narcissism. It'll take him years we'll in to his pro career to form a proper friendship with anyone. Actually she said he might need to be RETIRED for that to happen, when Exy isn't the center of his universe anymore (ex Ravens retire young, so I assume KevThea will wait until then to have Amalia and at that point they will HAVE to socialize more with other people)

Kevin depends on Andrew. And Andrew needs to feel needed. Kevin is one of His People because that's their Deal. And Andrew will never break it again. He was ready to choke Kevin to death in a bout of rage and worry for Neil, but now that the emergency is over he is back in Protector Mode. You think that makes them besties?

ok in response to ur first point about kevin's response to the abuse jean suffered in the nest: i agree, the "no reason" statement was pretty awful wording, but it's obvious that kevin realises how terrible it sounds and follows up with an explanation/correction. i don't think he ever dismisses what happened to jean. i think the very fact that kevin sends jean to usc and explains their situation to jeremy is evidence that he doesn't just take jean's trauma lightly. it's also important to note that kevin's conversation with jeremy abt jean being raped in the nest isn't him justifying or excusing anything the ravens did, it's clearly shown that he's simply explaining the way the nest operates to jeremy (which he has no control over btw). he never says he's better than jean, and that's why he wasn't raped/abused the way jean was, he's just explaining why, in the raven's twisted mindsets, they decided jean "deserved" it and he didn't. jeremy rightly says in response "there is nothing that justifies what happened to him" and while it's never explicitly explained what kevin's response to that is, it's pretty obvious he doesn't think jean deserved it and he knows it was awful. i don't really know how you could interpret anything kevin says about jean as "victim blaming", to me it's very obvious that kevin wasn't really explaining the way he thinks, he was explaining it from the perspective of the ravens in the nest. and yes, he probably does still have remnants of that toxic, harmful mentality ingrained in him (as does jean, by the way, in his own conversation with andrew, which is actually quite similar to jeremy and kevin's), but he was part of a cult that had brainwashed and conditioned him since he was a child so it's understandable that he has things to unlearn. i think it's ok to point out his flaws and mistakes when it comes to his relationship with jean, but it seems pretty ungenerous to interpret anything he says to/about jean as victim blaming or dismissive, when i think they're very much the opposite.

screenshots of those conversations to back me up:

(the jean + andrew convo illustrates that jean and kevin both understand the ravens' motives and "reasons" and "justifications" for their horrific actions; this does not directly translate to they themselves being okay with it, it's a way of thinking that they were steeped in for years, so it's understandable that it would bleed through in the way they think and speak about the things that happened in the nest)

r.e. your point about kevin and andrew. my post was pretty lighthearted and unserious. no, i wouldn't say, in a strictly canonical sense, that kevin and andrew are "besties". but i do think that they are something close to it for each other, since they're both not hugely friendly, i would say that they are the closest thing they each have to a best friend (maybe bar renee/neil). also nora never says kevin has no friends in canon; she does express that friendship is something kevin is still learning, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have any friends. in fact, she specifically states that neil and andrew are technically kevin's friends. yes he still needs to work on his exy fixation but i think it's pretty ungenerous to just consider it "narcissism" when u consider why he has such a dependency problem on exy and on being the best at it.

so yes, kevin does have friends, even if it's on a technicality. neil, andrew, thea, jean (past tense???) and jeremy all do count.

it's pretty sad to just reduce kevin and andrew's relationship to something as clinical as a transaction, when it's obvious they get riled up about/with each other (esp. abt exy) and they also do "like" each other to a certain degree, because they're literally described as joined at the hip and inseparable at the start of the series. yes, this is a lot to do with their deal, but why do u think they have the deal in the first place? yes, it's because of codependency and reliance and fear, but they wouldn't have established it if they despised or didn't trust each other.

r.e. the choking issue, i think that's actually pretty easily explained. it's a bit of a messy situation, but it wasn't, as you say, just "a bout of rage and worry" neil was literally kidnapped and being tortured at the time so i think it's understandable that andrew was riled up. also kevin did apparently say "you were always going to lose him" which didn't really help the situation. yes, it crossed some lines, but i think it makes a lot of sense why andrew did it. i could go into it further, but this post is already so long.

also last thing before i put this to rest:

[verreerrant]

Its my turn to Rant!!

Ragatha rant time babyyee. Ep5 spoilers

So Ragatha is socially incompetent. Not awkward but fully on she does not know how to act around people, much less of how act like herself around people. We've seen a bit of it in earlier episodes with her brushing off her feelings, others feelings, and actions done by others as well.

But it's glaring in this episode. Right away she tries to comfort Pomni, since the jester looks miserable, but then walks off with Kinger when she doesn't get a response. Jax recognizes that and comments. She does that a lot with Gangle, bare minimum to check in, more to sooth herself, before continuing to try and make herself feel better (ie. Argue with Jax, help Kinger).

She cannot read a room guys. Jax and Pomni are talking under the stars, she walks over, and instantly starts with the usual tango her and Jax have, not waiting to see that it's a bit more somber and notice his tone. When Pomni asks Jax a question Ragatha answers for him, then realized she did something wrong, only after she saw he glaring, then apologizes. I do think she actually felt really bad about this, she is definitely one of the more expensive of the bunch.

Later, at the bar, they talk about jobs, Gangle touches about about her school life. Ragatha starts to overshare trauma, stops herself when she sees the others looking at her (she never finished listing off her issues), then tries to tangent into humour, it goes very badly.

look how uncomfortable she looks, she does not know how to breath in even casual social interacts. And that's the thing, she is the only one that we haven't seen casual interacts with. She only is there to try to be positive, argue, or listen to the others. We rarely see her actually try and Talk with someone other than Kinger.

Softball. This is a big one for her. Pomni tries to talk to her a give her a pep talk. Ragatha DOES NOT WANT THIS TALK look at her face-

shes irritated and brushes off Pomni. She doesn't believe that any thing that she isn't doing will work. Then her and Jax argue and she riles up easily, takes Pomni's words extremely literally then uses that as her excuse.

She may have done it to prove to herself that changing and being negative doesn't work. Do exactly what jester said in the most heavy handed way then throw it out as not something she should be. She walks off, then avoids that and changes topics to the game. When Pomni returns, Ragath looks scared at first (probably the earlier mentioned abuse reaction)

She doubles checks with Pomni, then accepts. Since she really does feel the need to prove herself and she has spent the entire day failing at talking to people. But she has faith that she can do softball. Then she doesn't get to do that

That was her chance to show Pomni she was "good" instead Pomni is not paying attention, she didn't get to hit the ball, and she is still angry. And then we get those three seconds of silence.

Like. Damn okay, she's really upset. Even after Kinger and the others congratulate her she still looks to Pomni and is upset about the casual time her and Jax are having. That this either day Jax has been feral, and is being rewarded for it, but she has been trying hard to do something, and is now alone.

And at the end, she doesn't try to solve her own feelings, she gives up and moves on. There's a lot more to it that I'm sure others can explain better but bottom line is. Ragatha does not understand how to act around people since she isn't very emotionally intelligent, she's just desperately trying to be. Obviously she is affected by past abuse and that frames how she handles interactions with others, she is very much aware and against what her mother did, and now she's overcorrecting and still not healing.

[emotedllama]

I don't agree with McBride on everything here (in particular I would consider myself more "illiberal" than her in the context of this conversation, and cardassiangoodreads has some great points in the replies), but some of these quotes do a great job of articulating things I've been thinking about in the relationship between elected officials and activists:

We decided that we now have to say and fight for and push for every single perfect policy and cultural norm right now, regardless of whether the public is ready. And I think it misunderstands the role that politicians and, frankly, social movements have in maintaining proximity to public opinion, of walking people to a place. We should be ahead of public opinion, but we have to be within arm’s reach. If we get too far out ahead, we lose our grip on public opinion, and we can no longer bring it with us. And I think a lot of the conversations around sports and also some of the cultural changes that we saw in expected workplace behavior, etc. was the byproduct of maybe just getting too far out ahead and not actually engaging in the art of social change-making.

...

I think that there is an incentive from money and from social media — and those also go hand in hand sometimes with grass-roots donations — that incentivize the groups to want to show their influence and their effect by having politicians fight the fights that they want them to fight in ways that feel viscerally comforting to their own community that they’re representing. I get that. I understand that. One, we have to be better as elected officials in saying no, in saying: Public opinion is everything. And if you want us to change, you need to help foster the change in public opinion before you’re asking these elected officials to betray the fact that they are, at the end of the day, representatives who have to represent in some form or fashion the views of the people that they represent. At some point, you will represent the people’s positions — or they will find someone else who will. So it is just an unsustainable dynamic for the groups to continue to ask elected officials to take these maximalist positions, to ignore where their voters are. They have to do the hard work of persuasion. There’s always going to be a tension between the groups and elected officials. Everyone has to do their own job, but there has to be some degree of understanding.

I really recommend reading the whole interview but for necessary context, she's not criticizing people for wanting the "maximalist" positions, but rather considering what is the most effective way to achieve desired social change. And while I would disagree that public opinion is "everything", I agree with the frustration on how some activist-minded communities put too much emphasis on pressuring politicians and not enough on changing public opinion.

Sarah McBride on Why the Left Lost on Trans Rights

Full text of the podcast episode below for those who don't or can't go to the NYT page or listen

This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

President Trump, in his inauguration speech, was perfectly clear about what he intended to do.

Archived clip of President Trump: As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female.

Starting the day of that speech, Trump began an all-out effort to roll back trans rights, using every power the federal government had and some that it may not have.

Archived clip: President Trump has signed an executive order which declares the U.S. government will no longer recognize the concept of gender identity. Archived clip: President Trump directing the Secretary of Education to create a plan to cut funding for schools that teach what he calls gender ideology. Archived clip: This afternoon, Trump makes a move to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports. Archived clip: Ban on gender-affirming care for transgender kids. Archived clip: Ban on gender-affirming care for transgender inmates in federal prisons. Archived clip: Ban on transgender troops serving in the military. Archived clip: These executive orders, many of them have not actually gone into effect yet, but when I look across the country, we’re already hearing stories of impact. Archived clip: In a time when we are struggling to find people to volunteer to do this, we are begging to be allowed to continue our service, and you’re just going to wash us away. So today I’m not OK. Archived clip: It’s a complete dehumanization of transgender people. Years and years and years into who I am, and I’m supposed to out myself? It’s about privacy and dignity for me to be able to change my passport to male.

A lot of the things Trump is doing in this term have put him on the wrong side of public opinion — but not this.

In a recent poll where Trump’s approval rating was around 40 percent, 52 percent of Americans approved of how he’s handling trans issues. Another poll showed that was more than approved of Trump’s handling of immigration. Far more than approved of his handling of tariffs. And if you look more deeply into polling on trans rights, the public has swung right on virtually every policy you can poll.

Trump didn’t just win the election. He and the movement and ideology behind him had been winning the argument.

Sarah McBride is a freshman congresswoman from Delaware, where she was formerly a state senator. She’s the first openly trans member of Congress, and her view is that the trans rights movement and the left more broadly have to grapple with why their strategy failed — how they lost not only power but hearts and minds, and what needs to be done differently to protect trans people and begin winning back the public starting right now.

I was struck, talking to McBride, by how much she was offering a theory that goes far beyond trans rights. What she’s offering is a counter to the dominant political style that emerged as algorithmic social media collided with politics — a style that is more about policing and pushing those who agree with you than it is about persuading those who don’t.

Ezra Klein: Sarah McBride, welcome to the show.

Sarah McBride: Thanks for having me.

I want to begin with some polling. Pew asked the same set of questions in 2022 and 2025, and what it found was this collapse in what I would call persuasion.

They polled the popularity of protecting trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces. That had lost eight points in those three years. Requiring health insurance companies to cover gender transition lost five points. Requiring trans people to use bathrooms that match their biological sex gained eight points.

When you hear those results, what, to you, happened there?

By every objective metric, support for trans rights is worse now than it was six or seven years ago. And that’s not isolated to just trans issues. I think if you look across issues of gender right now, you have seen a regression. Marriage equality support is actually lower now than it was a couple of years ago in a recent poll. We also see a regression around support for whether women should have the same opportunities as men compared to five, 10, 15 years ago.

Editors’ Picks

Shining a Light on the World of Tiny ProteinsI Scream, You Scream. They Don’t Scream for Ice Cream.The ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ Star Mason Thames Is Still Freaking Out

So there’s a larger regression from a gender perspective that I think is impacting this regression on trans rights. But I think it has been more acute, more significant in the trans-rights space.

Candidly, I think we’ve lost the art of persuasion. We’ve lost the art of change-making over the last couple of years. We’re not in this position because of trans people. There was a very clear, well-coordinated, well-funded effort to demonize trans people, to stake out positions on fertile ground for anti-trans politics and to have those be the battlegrounds — rather than some of the areas where there’s more public support. We’re not in this position because of the movement or the community, but clearly what we’ve been doing over the last several years has not been working to stave it off or continue the progress that we were making eight, nine, 10 years ago.

I think a lot of it can be traced to a false sense of security that the L.G.B.T.Q. movement and the progressive movement writ large began to feel in the postmarriage world. There was a sense of cultural momentum that was this unending, cresting wave. There is this sense of a cultural victory that lulled us into a false sense of security and in many ways shut down needed conversations.

The support that we saw for trans rights in 2016, 2017 — it was a mirage of support in some ways. Because I think, in the postmarriage world, there was a transfer of support from the L.G.B. to the T. for two reasons.

One, I think people said: Well, the T. is part of the acronym. I support gay people, so I’ll support trans people — it’s all the same movement. Two, I think in those early days after marriage, a lot of people regretted having been wrong on marriage in the 1990s and 2000s. And they said: I didn’t understand what it meant to be gay, and therefore I didn’t support marriage, and I regret not supporting something because I didn’t understand it. So I’m going to, without understanding, support trans rights because I don’t want to make that same mistake again.

I think that resulted in a lot of us — a lot of our movement — stopping the conversation and ceasing doing the hard work of opening hearts and changing minds and telling stories that over 20 years had shifted and deepened understanding on gay identities that allowed for marriage equality to be built on solid ground.

And I think that allowed for the misinformation, the disinformation — that well-coordinated, well-funded campaign — to really take advantage of that lack of understanding. And the support for trans rights was a house built on sand.

I want to connect two things you said there, because I hadn’t thought about this exactly before. You made this point that there’s been a generalized gender regression — which is true. And you also made this point that people had this metaphor in their minds: I was wrong about gay marriage, I didn’t understand that experience, so maybe I’m wrong here, too.

But the one thing that’s maybe different here is there’s a set of narrow policies, like nondiscrimination, and then a broader cultural effort — everybody should put their pronouns in their bio or say them before they begin speaking at a meeting — that was more about destabilizing the gender binary.

And there people had a much stronger view. Like: I do know what it means. I’ve been a man all my life. I’ve been a woman all my life. How dare you tell me how I have to talk about myself or refer to myself!

And that made the metaphor break. Because if the gay marriage fight was about what other people do, there was a dimension to this that was about what you do and how you should see yourself or your kids or your society.

I think that’s an accurate reflection of the overplaying of the hand in some ways — that we as a coalition went to Trans 201, Trans 301, when people were still at a very much Trans 101 stage.

I also think there were requests that people perceived as a cultural aggression, which then allowed the right to say: We’re punishing trans people because of their actions. Rather than: We’re going after innocent bystanders.

And I think some of the cultural mores and norms that started to develop around inclusion of trans people were probably premature for a lot of people. We became absolutist — not just on trans rights but across the progressive movement — and we forgot that in a democracy we have to grapple with where the public authentically is and actually engage with it. Part of this is fostered by social media.

We decided that we now have to say and fight for and push for every single perfect policy and cultural norm right now, regardless of whether the public is ready. And I think it misunderstands the role that politicians and, frankly, social movements have in maintaining proximity to public opinion, of walking people to a place.

We should be ahead of public opinion, but we have to be within arm’s reach. If we get too far out ahead, we lose our grip on public opinion, and we can no longer bring it with us. And I think a lot of the conversations around sports and also some of the cultural changes that we saw in expected workplace behavior, etc. was the byproduct of maybe just getting too far out ahead and not actually engaging in the art of social change-making.

The position for more maximalist demands is that you need to be in a hurry — trans people are dying now, suffering now — and that there isn’t time for decades of political organizing here. And also that maybe it works, or there’s a reason to believe it works.

You’ve been in more of those spaces than me. How would you describe how the more maximalist approach and culture evolved and why?

Well, first off, I think you’re right. It is understandable. This is a scary moment. I’m scared. As a trans person, I’m scared.

I recognize that when the house is on fire, when there are attacks that are dangerous, very dangerous, it can feel like we need to scream and we need to sound the alarm and we need everyone to be doing exactly that. I get that instinct. I understand that people would say: If you give a little bit here, they’ll take a mile.

We’re not negotiating with the other side, though. In this moment, we have to negotiate with public opinion. And we shouldn’t treat the public like they’re Republican politicians.

When you recognize that distinction, I think it allows for a pragmatic approach that has, in my mind, the best possible chance of shifting public opinion as quickly as possible. It would be one thing if screaming about how dangerous this is right now had the effect of stopping these attacks, but it won’t.

You call it an abandonment of persuasion that became true across a variety of issues for progressives. Also for people on the right. And sometimes I wonder how much that reflected the movement of politics to these very unusually designed platforms of speech, where what you do really is not talk to people you disagree with but talk about people you disagree with to people you do agree with — and then see whether or not they agree with what you said. There’s a way in which I think that breeds very different habits in people who do it.

I think that’s absolutely right. Again, we’re not in this place because of our community or our movement. Or because we weren’t shaming people enough, weren’t canceling people enough, weren’t yelling at people enough, weren’t denouncing anti-trans positions enough.

I think the dynamic with social media is that the most outrageous, the most extreme, the most condemnatory content is what gets amplified the most. It’s what gets liked and retweeted the most, and people mistake getting likes and retweets as a sign of effectiveness. Those are two fundamentally different things. And I think that, whether it’s subconscious or even conscious, the rewarding of unproductive conversations has completely undermined the capacity for us as individuals — or politically — to have conversations that persuade, that open people’s hearts and minds, that meet them where they are.

And I think the other dynamic that we have with social media is that there are two kinds of people on social media. The vast majority of people are doomscrollers: They just go on, and they scroll their social media. Twenty percent, maybe, are doomposters: 10 percent on the far right, 10 percent on the far left — the people who are so, so strident and angry that they’re compelled to post, and that content gets elevated. But what that has resulted in for the 80 percent who are just doomscrollers is this false perception of reality.

Take a person, let’s say they’re center left — it gives them a false perception that everyone on the left believes this, and it pulls them that way. And then it gives them a false perception that everyone on the right believes the most extreme version of the right.

It creates this false binary, extreme perception, availability bias. Because all of the content we’re seeing is reflective of just the 20 percent, and it has warped our perception of reality, of who people are and where the public is.

One of the best things about being an elected official is that I have to break out of that social media echo chamber — that social media extreme world — and interact with everyday people. And yes, there are real disagreements, but 80 percent of the doomscrollers or the people who aren’t even on social media are actually in a place where we can have a conversation with them.

When I ask this question, I don’t just mean on trans issues, but: You represent Delaware, which is a blue state — not Massachusetts blue — but blue. If you took your sense of what Democrats want or what the country wants from your experiences in social media versus your sense from traveling around your state, how would they differ?

I think they would differ in two ways. One, they would differ in the issues that we would focus on. What you hear on social media is a preoccupation with the most inflamed cultural war issues that you almost never hear when you’re out talking to voters in any part of the state. What you hear is an understandable catastrophizing around democracy, which you don’t hear nearly as much when you’re out talking to voters.

What you hear about when you’re talking to voters is the cost of living. You hear about the bread and butter issues that are keeping people up at night — people who aren’t on social media or aren’t posting on social media. And so you hear a difference in priorities, but then you also hear a difference in approach.

People are hungry for an approach that doesn’t treat our fellow citizens as enemies but rather treats our fellow citizens as neighbors, even if we disagree with them — an approach that’s filled with grace.

On social media we have come to this conclusion, rightfully so, that people’s grace has been abused in our society. That the grace and patience of marginalized people have been abused. And that is true.

But on social media, the course correction to that has been to eliminate all grace from our politics. It’s: How dare you have conversations with people who disagree with you? How dare you be willing to work with people who disagree with you? How dare you compromise? How dare you seek to find common ground with Republicans?

And when you go out into the real world — Democrats, independents and Republicans — there is a hunger for some level of grace for us to just not be so angry at one another and miserable. They want to see and know that we actually do have more in common. And therefore it gives you hope that persuasion is not only necessary but can actually still be effective.

What does grace in politics mean to you, and when have you either seen it or experienced it?

I think grace in politics means, one, creating room for disagreement: assuming good intentions, assuming that the people who are on the other side of an issue from you aren’t automatically hateful, horrible people. I think it means creating some space for disagreement within your own coalition. I think it’s a kindness that just feels so missing from our body politic and our national dialogue.

I saw it in the Delaware State Senate on both sides of the aisle, whether it’s Republicans in Delaware joining on to be cosponsors on an L.G.B.T.Q. panic defense bill that I was the prime sponsor of. Whether it was the discourse being much kinder and more civil on a whole host of culture war issues — I saw that grace has the effect of lowering the temperature, removing some of the incentives to go after vulnerable people in this country, in our state.

I saw it with my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle, who didn’t vote for bills that were deeply personal to me, and yet we still found ways to work together. We still found ways to develop friendships.

And look, I know that places more of a burden on me than it does on them. I know that when you’re asking a marginalized person to extend grace in a conversation, you’re asking much more of that marginalized person. But change-making isn’t always easy, and it’s not always fair.

And why would we expect that the extra burdens and barriers of marginalization would cease at the point of overcoming the marginalization, of creating the change necessary to eliminate prejudice and create equal opportunity in our society?

No — that’s where the barriers are going to be greatest. That’s where the burdens are going to be greatest.

It reminds me of a line that I hear less now, but I used to see it a lot, which is: It’s not my job to educate you.

I always thought about that line because on one level, I understood it. It’s probably not your job to educate anyone.

But if you’re in politics, if what you’re trying to do is political change, I always found that line to be almost antipolitical.

Yes.

That if what you want to do is change a law, change a society, change a heart, and you’re the one who wants to do it — well then, whose job is it? And who are you expecting to do it?

It’s an understandable frustration, but it’s the only way forward.

I don’t believe that every person from an underrepresented or an unrepresented community needs to always bear the brunt and burden of public education. I don’t believe that every L.G.B.T.Q. person has to be out and sharing their story and doing all of that hard work. But for the folks who are willing to do it, we need to let them.

One of the problems we’ve had is that we’ve gone from: It’s not my job as an individual person who’s just trying to make it through the day to educate everyone — to: No one from that community should educate, and frankly, we should just stop having this conversation because the fact that we are having this conversation at all is hurtful and oppressive.

Maybe it is hurtful, but you can’t foster social change if you don’t have a conversation. You can’t change people if you exclude them. And I will just say, you can’t have absolutism on the left or the right without authoritarianism.

The fact that we have real disagreements, the fact that we have difficult conversations, the fact that we have painful conversations is not a bug of democracy. It’s a feature of democracy. And yes, that is hard and difficult — but again, how can we expect that the process of overcoming marginalization is going to be fair?

The discourse has taken this understandable critique of society and the way we operate and the burdens we place on marginalized people, and we’ve somehow said: Well, the one place that we have control over whether we allow for that marginalization is in the strategies we use to overcome it. So we’re not going to engage in that because it’s self-oppression.

And I think that is such a self-defeating and counterproductive approach.

We are in the most illiberal era of my lifetime in American politics. And I don’t mean liberalism in the sense of supporting or not supporting universal health care but in terms of due process, in terms of tolerance, in terms of the basic practice of politics and living amid each other.

It has also made me think about the need to clearly define what the practice of illiberalism itself is. What do you think it is?

I think it is the recognition that in a free society, we are going to live and think differently. It is the allowance of that disagreement in the public square and the tussle of that disagreement in the public square.

And that is uncomfortable. That is not easy. And yes, there are going to be people in that conversation for whom it’s going to be more difficult and more uncomfortable. But in the internet world, you can’t suppress diversity of thought. It will always bubble up. But it will bubble up, if suppressed, with an extra bitterness and an extremism fostered in that echo chamber that it’s been suppressed to. It will inevitably bubble up like a volcano. I think that’s what we’re seeing right now.

I will say, while the left made this mistake of fostering an illiberalism based on a false sense of cultural victory, the right is now making the exact same mistake. I think they’re overplaying their hand.

They’re interpreting the 2024 election to be a cultural mandate that is much greater than what it actually is. And if they continue to do that, there will be a backlash to the illiberalism — the cultural illiberalism, not just the legal illiberalism — of the right, in the same way that there’s been a backlash to the cultural illiberalism of the left.

I couldn’t agree with that more. We’re going to get to that.

I want to talk for a minute about the 2024 election and the aftermath. There’s been a lot of rethinking and self-recrimination among Democrats.

One of the comments that got a lot of attention came right after the election when your colleague Seth Moulton, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, said: “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

What did you think when you heard that?

One, that it wasn’t the language that I would use.

But I think it came from a larger belief that the Democratic Party needed to start to have an open conversation about our illiberalism. That we needed to recognize that we were talking to ourselves. We were fighting fights that felt viscerally comforting to our own base, or fighting fights in a way that felt viscerally comforting to our own base, rather than maintaining proximity to the public and being normal people. [Chuckle.]

The sports conversation is a good one because there is a big difference between banning trans young people from extracurricular programs consistent with their gender identity and recognizing that there’s room for nuance in this conversation. The notion that we created this “all-on” or “all-off” mentality, that you had to be perfect on trans rights across the board, use exactly the right language, and unless you do that, you are a bigot, you’re an enemy. When you create a binary all-on or all-off option for people, you’re going to have a lot of imperfect allies who are going to inevitably choose the all-off option.

What ends up happening is the left excommunicates someone who not only — Seth voted against the ban on trans athletes, but we would excommunicate someone who uses imperfect language — yes, again, not language I would use. But we would excommunicate someone who’s saying that there’s nuance in this conversation and use this language that we don’t approve of — yet still votes “the right way”? That’s exactly what’s wrong with our approach.

And look, Seth is not going anywhere, but for a lot of everyday folks, if they think how Seth thinks or if they think that there’s room for nuance in this conversation and we tell them: You’re a bigot, you’re not welcome here, you’re not part of our coalition, we will not consider you an ally? The right has done a very good job of saying: Listen, you have violated the illiberalism of the left, you have been cast aside for your common sense — welcome into our club.

And then once you get welcomed into that club, human nature is: Well, I was with the Democratic Party on 90 percent of things, maybe against them on 10 percent of things or sort of in the middle on 10 percent. Once you get welcomed into that other club, human psychology is that you start to adopt those positions. And instead of being with us on 90 percent of things and against us on 10 percent of things, that person, now welcomed into the far-right club, starts to be against us on 90 percent of things and with us on only 10 percent of things.

That dynamic is part of the regression that we have seen. Not only that, but the hardening of the opposition that we’ve seen on trans issues.

We have been an exclusionary tent that is shedding imperfect allies, which is great. We’re going to have a really, really miserable self-righteous, morally pure club in the gulag we’ve all been sent off to.

[Laughs.]

I think this goes to your point in a way. After Moulton made those comments, The Times reported that a local party official and an ally had compared him to a Nazi cooperator, that there were protests outside his office.

I was always struck by which part of his comments got all that attention. It was the part I just read to you, but he also said this: “Having reasonable restrictions for safety and competitive fairness in sports seems like, well, it’s very empirically a majority opinion.” He’s right on that. “But should we take civil rights away from trans people, so they can just get fired for being who they are? No.” He was expressing opposition to what was about to be Donald Trump’s agenda.

Yes.

And this space of his divergence, from an issue that had already been lost — the polling was terrible on it — that was where people on the left focused. And his expression of support and allyship, as I saw it, barely ever got reported or commented on. It struck me as telling.

I think it absolutely is telling. The best thing for trans people in this moment is for all of us to wake up to the fact that we have to grapple with the world as it is, that we have to grapple with where public opinion is right now, and that we need all of the allies that we can get.

Again, Seth voted against the bans. If we are going to defend some of the basic fundamental rights of trans people, we are going to need those individuals in our coalition. If you have to be perfect on every trans rights issue for us to say you can be an ally and part of our coalition, then we are going to have a cap of about 30 percent on our coalition. If we are going to have 50 percent plus one — or frankly, more, necessarily 60 percent or more — in support of nondiscrimination protections for trans people, in support of our ability to get the health care that we need, then by definition, it will have to include a portion of the 70 percent who oppose trans people’s participation in sports.

Right now, the message from so many is: You’re not welcome, and your support for 90 percent of these policies is irrelevant. The fact that you diverge on one thing makes you evil.

It also misunderstands the history of civil rights in this country. “You can’t compromise on civil rights” is a great tweet. But tell me: Which civil rights act delivered all progress and all civil rights for people of color in this country? The Civil Rights Act of 1957? The Civil Rights Act of 1960? The Civil Rights Act of 1964? The Voting Rights Act of 1965? The Civil Rights Act of 1968? Or any of the civil rights acts that have been passed since the 1960s?

That movement was disciplined, it was strategic, it picked its battles, it picked its fights, and it compromised to move the ball forward. And right now, that compromise would be deemed unprincipled, weak, and throwing everyone under the bus.

And that is so counterproductive. It is so harmful, and it completely betrays the lessons of every single social movement and civil rights movement in our country’s history.

We have an example of a very successful social movement in recent history with marriage equality. Where would we have been in 2007 and 2008 if not only we had not tolerated the fact that Barack Obama was ostensibly not for marriage equality then, but if we had said to voters: Even if you vote against the marriage ban, but aren’t quite comfortable with marriage yet, then you’re a bigot and you don’t belong in our coalition — where would that movement have been?

The most effective messengers were the people who had evolved themselves. We had grace personified in that movement, and it worked beyond even the advocate’s wildest expectations in terms of the speed of both legal progress and cultural progress. Because we created incentives for people to grow, we created space for people to grow, and we allowed people into our tent, into that conversation who weren’t already with us.

You mentioned the period in 2008 when Barack Obama was running for president, and at the very least his public position — many of us suspected it was not his private position — was that he opposed gay marriage. That was the mainstream position at that point in the Democratic Party, and there was a compromise position they all supported, which was civil unions.

Is there an analogy to the civil unions debate for you now?

In the sports conversation, it’s local control. It’s allowing for individual athletic associations to make those individual determinations, and in some cases they’ll have policies that strike a right balance. In some cases, they’ll have policies that are too restrictive. And I think that is the equivalent to the civil union’s position in that debate.

By allowing for democratic voters, independent voters — even some elected officials — to take that civil unions position, one that met voters where they were, it gave some of our politicians who needed it an offramp so that they didn’t have to choose between being all-on or all-off. And it allowed that conversation to continue and prevented more harm from being inflicted.

I want to pick up on the polling. There’s this YouGov polling from January that looked at all these different issues. There are a lot of issues around trans rights that actually poll great. Protection for trans people against hate crimes: plus 36 net approval. Banning employers from firing trans people because of their identity: plus 33. Allowing transgender people to serve in the military, which Donald Trump is trying to rescind: plus 22. Requiring all new public buildings to include gender-neutral bathrooms: This surprised me — plus seven.

Then there’s the other side. Everybody knows that the sports issue is tough in the polling, but banning people under 18 from attending drag shows — that’s popular. Banning youth from accessing puberty blockers and hormones — that’s very popular. Banning public schools from teaching lessons on transgender issues — that’s popular. Requiring transgender people to use bathrooms that match their biological sex — that is popular.

When you look at these lists of issues, what do you see as dividing them? What cuts the issues that you could win on now from those that have heavy disapproval?

Well, I think that there’s very clearly a distinction that the public makes between young people and adults. There is a distinction that is made in many cases when it comes to what people feel like is government support of or funding of — versus just allowing trans people to live their lives, allowing trans troops who are qualified to continue to serve, allowing trans people who are doing great jobs in their workplace to continue to work.

It all goes back to this notion of: Get government out, let people live their lives, and let families and individuals make the best decisions for themselves. That should be the through line of our perspective, a libertarian approach to allowing trans people to live fully and freely. There are some complicated questions, but those questions shouldn’t be answered by politicians who are trying to exploit those issues for political gain.

I was struck by your use of the word “libertarian” there. Because when I look at this polling, what I see is something quite similar, which is: Americans, by and large, aren’t cruel. Their view here is pretty “Live and let live.”

Yes.

They have different views, which we can talk about in a minute, on minors. But where the question is whether the government coming in and bothering you — “you” being any trans person — they don’t really want that.

What they don’t want to do is change their lives, or think something is changing for them in their society. Maybe those two things are not in all ways possible, certainly over the long term, but there are a lot of places where they are possible.

It seems to me that in 2024 and over the last couple years, what Republicans did very well — their approach to persuasion — was to pick the right wedge issues.

You would think that the entire debate over trans policy in America was about N.C.A.A. swimmers. Like this was the biggest problem facing trans people, the biggest problem in some ways facing the country. When it’s a pretty edge-case issue, and questions like nondiscrimination and access to health care are much more widespread.

What they did was they used their wedge issue, and they’re now attacking those majority positions. Trump is attacking discrimination — he wants people discriminated against. He doesn’t want trans people to be able to put the identity they hold and present as on their passports. Which is not a huge winning issue for him.

So there’s this question of picking the right wedge issues. Is there a wedge issue for you that you wish Democrats would pick?

Listen, I think that we do much better when we keep the main thing. Defending Medicaid in this moment is the main thing.

For everybody.

For everyone, for everyone. And look, I think abortion to some degree had been a wedge issue that was to the Democrats’ advantage, not to the Republicans’ advantage.

But I think we have to reorient the public’s perception of what our priorities are as a party. When we lean into the culture wars and lean into culture war wedge issues, even if they benefit us, they reinforce a perception that the Democratic Party is unconcerned with the economic needs of the American people.

When you ask a voter: What are the top five priorities of the Democratic Party, what are the top five priorities of the Republican Party, and what are the top five priorities for them as a voter? Three out of the five issues that are the top issues for that voter appear in what their perception of the top five issues for the Republican Party is. Only one of their top five priorities appears in their perception of the top five priorities for the Democrats. That’s health care — and it was fifth out of five. The top two were abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. issues.

And I don’t care what your position is on those two issues, you are not going to win an election if voters think that those two issues are your top issues, rather than their ability to get a good wage and good benefits, get a house and live the American dream.

We have to, in this moment, reinforce our actual priority as a party — which is making sure that everyone can pursue the American dream, which has become increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible; that everyone should be able to get the health care they need; be able to buy a home; be able to send their child to child care without breaking the bank, if they can even get a spot. That needs to be our focus.

When we have this purity politics approach to L.G.B.T.Q. issues or abortion, what we communicate, even if we’re not talking about those issues, is those are threshold issues, and therefore the voter reads that as those are priority issues. The only way to convince the voter that those are not our priority issues, that that’s not what we’re spending our capital and time on — but rather on giving them health care and housing — is to make it abundantly clear to people that our tent can include diversity of thought on those issues.

Something that I notice in the broad coalition of groups and people and funders who identify as or support Democrats is that they all want the issue they care most about to be the issue that gets talked about the most. People who fund anything from climate to trans rights, to any of the hotter issues in American life — you could actually imagine a strategy where those groups and that money went to making every election about Medicaid, because Medicaid is just a killer issue for Democrats. And then the people who get elected are better on those other issues, too. But it doesn’t. That money, those groups that are organizing, what they often want Democrats to do is publicly take unpopular positions on their issues.

I think all the time about the A.C.L.U. questionnaire that asked candidates, and in this case Kamala Harris, whether she would support the government paying for gender reassignment surgery for illegal immigrants in prison. Even if your whole position in life is to make that possible, the last thing you’d want is for anybody to claim it out in public. You would want nobody to ever think about that question ever at all.

And it’s something I’ve heard Democrats talking about more after the election — just rethinking on some level, this question of: Is the point of all this organizing to get politicians to commit to the most maximalist version of your issue set? Or is the point of this organizing to somehow figure out how to win Senate seats in Missouri and Kansas? So you have very moderate Democrats who nevertheless make Chuck Schumer the Senate majority leader rather than John Thune.

I think that there is an incentive from money and from social media — and those also go hand in hand sometimes with grass-roots donations — that incentivize the groups to want to show their influence and their effect by having politicians fight the fights that they want them to fight in ways that feel viscerally comforting to their own community that they’re representing.

I get that. I understand that. One, we have to be better as elected officials in saying no, in saying: Public opinion is everything. And if you want us to change, you need to help foster the change in public opinion before you’re asking these elected officials to betray the fact that they are, at the end of the day, representatives who have to represent in some form or fashion the views of the people that they represent.

At some point, you will represent the people’s positions — or they will find someone else who will. So it is just an unsustainable dynamic for the groups to continue to ask elected officials to take these maximalist positions, to ignore where their voters are. They have to do the hard work of persuasion.

There’s always going to be a tension between the groups and elected officials. Everyone has to do their own job, but there has to be some degree of understanding.

I always think this is such an interesting question for politicians to work with because there is the internal and the external push to authenticity.

Yes.

We don’t want these poll-tested politicians. And it’s also your job to represent.

Yes.

On issues personal to you, on issues not as personal to you, how do you think about balancing “They elected you” versus “You are their servant”?

Look, all of these decisions inevitably require a balancing of my own views, my own principles and the views of the people that I represent. But I think one thing you always have to do is you have to go: OK, here’s an issue that I feel very strongly about. If I vote against this, what are the second, third and fourth order consequences of voting against or voting in favor?

You might abstractly agree with something as an ideal, but if you were to pursue that or implement that policy, it would have, in the medium- to long-term, a regressive effect because there’s a backlash to pushing too hard or taking too maximalist of a position by the mainstream in our politics.

One of the problems we’ve had is that we have said: Not only do you have to vote the way we want you to vote, but you have to speak the way we want you to speak.

And I always have said, even when I was an advocate: If we can get the policy vote that we want and the compromise we are accepting is essentially a rhetorical compromise, that is a pretty darn good deal.

Again, we have to be willing to have these conversations out in the open. We have to recognize that there’s complexity, there’s nuance — and that means not just in the policy space but in the political space. That it’s authentic, to say: These are some really difficult conversations, and sometimes I’m going to get it right and sometimes I’m going to get it wrong, and sometimes I’m voting exclusively with what I think is the right thing to do, even if my voters disagree. But also, sometimes I’m going to have to take a balanced view of this. And that’s democracy.

I want to pick up on speech. It’s true on trans and gender issues — it’s also true on a bunch of other issues in the past couple of years — that a huge number of the fights that ended up defining the issue were not about legislation. They were about speech.

I’ve always myself thought this reflects social media, but the number of people who have talked to me about the term “birthing persons,” which I think virtually nobody has used, or “Latinx” was a big one like this — there is in general this extreme weighting of: Can you push changes of speech onto the people who agree with you and possibly onto society as a whole?

And the strategy worked backward from the speech outcome, not the legislative outcome. How do you think about that weighting of speech versus votes?

There is no question in my mind that the vote is much more important than the rhetoric that they use. We have discoursed our way into: If you talk about this issue in a way that’s suboptimal from my perspective, you’re actually laying the foundation for oppression and persecution.

Maybe academically that’s true, but welcome to the real world. We are prioritizing the wrong thing, and it’s an element of virtue signaling — like: I’m showing that I am the most radical, I’m the most progressive on this issue because I’m going to take this person who does everything right substantively and crucify this person for not being perfect in language.

It’s a way of demonstrating that you’re in the in-group, that you understand the language, that you understand the mores and the values of that group, and it’s a way of building capital and credibility with that in-group. I think that’s what it is.

It’s inherently exclusionary. And that’s part of the thing that’s wrong with our politics right now. All of our politics feel so exclusionary. The coalition that wins the argument about who is most welcoming will be the coalition that wins our politics.

I think that’s such an interesting point, and I think probably true.

I’d also be curious to hear your thoughts on this: I think there’s a very interesting way that speech and its political power confuse people because it’s two things at once. It’s extremely low cost and extremely high cost.

Pronouns, for instance, are a very easy thing. And basically, if you won’t use somebody’s preferred pronouns, I think you’re an [expletive]. That’s my personal view of it. But trying to execute a speech change where everybody lists their pronouns in their bio, where every meeting begins with people going around the circle and saying their name and their pronouns — that feels very different to people.

It seems small. You don’t have to pay anything out of pocket, you don’t have to go anywhere — and yet the language we use is very, very important to us.

Yes, I think you’re absolutely right there. And I think the thing with pronouns, too, is a prime example of where we’ve lost grace, though.

Me calling people [expletive] is not graceful? [Laughs.]

Well, no, no. I think there is a difference between someone who’s intentionally misgendering someone and people who make mistakes.

Yes, totally.

And I think that there has been, whether warranted or not, the perception that people are going to be shamed if they make mistakes.

But then I think you’re absolutely right, too, that there is a distinction between treating me the way I want to be treated, and everyone changing their behavior and requiring this sort of in-group language that exceeds just calling the person in front of you what they want to be called.

And I think it gets to something we were talking about earlier. There are two pieces to the politics of this. One is fairly popular, at least for now, and the other is a much tougher lift.

I think most people have that basic sense of politeness. If you want to be referred to in a certain way, yes, I might slip up. But if I’m being a decent person, I’m going to try.

Yes.

Versus the move from pronouns to the move for calling things cisgender — that was a much bigger effort that in some ways wasn’t described as such.

And I feel like there’s been a dimension to the politics here where things that were very academic arguments became political arguments, and then people were a little bit unclear on what the political win would be.

To destabilize the fundamental gender binary that people understand as operating is touching something very deep in society. Versus treating other people with respect and courtesy and decency and grace is a much easier sell. And I think it’s OK to want to do the former, but I think people kept mixing up which their actual project was.

At the end of the day, the thing that we lost is that we’re just talking about people trying to live their lives, trying to live the best lives they can.

We got into this rabbit hole of academic intellectual discourse that doesn’t actually matter in people’s lives. We got into this performative fighting to show our bona fides to our own in-group, and we lost the fundamental truth that all of those things are only even possible once you’ve done the basic legwork of allowing people to see trans people as people.

When you allow trans people to be seen as human beings who have the same hopes and dreams and fears as everyone else, once that basic conception of humanity exists, then all the other things, all the other conversations sort of fall into place. Language inevitably changes across society, across cultures, across time, but it is a byproduct of cultural change.

And I just think we started to have what maybe were conversations that were happening in academic institutions, or conversations that were happening in the community, and we started having those out in public on social media. And then we demanded that everyone else have that conversation with us and incorporate what the dominant position is in that conversation in the way they live their lives.

And that’s just not how this happens. Let’s just talk about human beings who want you to live by the golden rule. Let’s just talk about the fact that trans people are people who can be service members and doctors and lawyers and educators and elected officials, and do a damn good job at that.

That is the gateway to everything else, and it has always been in every social movement.

The place where not just the politics but also the answers are complicated is around children.

We talked about the N.C.A.A. swimmers and the edge-case nature of that. But schools are broader. And a lot of what the Trump administration is doing, a lot of what you see Republicans are doing in states, is around schools and minors. And that’s tougher.

Parents want to know what their kids are doing. On the one hand, if you’re a kid with gender dysphoria, taking puberty blockers early matters. On the other hand, there are a lot of things parents don’t let their kids do young because they’re not sure what they’re going to want in a couple years.

How do you think about that set of issues? The leave-them-alone approach makes a lot of sense for adults. But we don’t leave kids alone. Kids exist in a paternalistic system where their parents and schools have power over them. So the question of policy there becomes very profound.

Yes. First off, I think in that instance we rightfully acknowledge the important role that parents play in decisions for their children.

Look, you can recognize that there’s nuance here. You can say that there needs to be stronger standards of care, that maybe things got too lenient.

But ultimately politicians aren’t the people who should be making these decisions. The family should be making these decisions. The family, in consultation with a doctor, should be making these decisions.

And I think that is a fair balance in recognizing the need for every child to get medical care and also the right of parents to make decisions, including health care decisions for their children.

But in some European countries right now, you do see the government setting tighter standards. There have definitely been a lot of arguments about whether or not the research was good, whether or not the research was ideologically influenced.

So there’s some government role here, some role for professional associations, some context in which families and doctors make these decisions. What is that role?

I think you just hit on that distinction, which is that in many European countries, the distinction between the health care system and the government is fuzzier. In many cases, you have government-operated hospitals.

Here, you have health care systems. You have standards of care developed by providers in those medical associations. And that is where those decisions should be left up to, in terms of establishing the standards of care. And then when applying those standards of care, allowing the practical application of those standards of care to happen between patients, families and providers. Because it’s fundamentally a different kind of system.

I think the critique and the fear from the right that I hear is that some of these same dynamics — toward pushing out people who question the evidence, toward there being things you can say and things you cannot say — took hold. And that the results of that can’t be trusted — that everything you said is happening in politics is also happening in medicine and elsewhere.

We actually started to see a pretty difficult but important conversation within WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, about the standards of care for youth care before government started intervening. They started having a conversation about how to adjust the standards of care, recognizing perhaps that they needed to tighten them.

And that’s true across health care: Standards of care across different forms of care are constantly evolving.

That conversation was starting to happen. You cannot tell me that it’s the role of the government to pre-empt those conversations. Those conversations should not be settled in legislative bodies by politicians who aren’t looking at the data, don’t understand the data and certainly aren’t objectively interpreting the data.

And look, the conversation changes when people understand what it means to be trans. Because I think right now we think of it as a choice. We think of it as an intellectual decision. Like: I want to be a girl. I want to be a boy. And I want to do this because of these rewards, or I don’t want to do it because of these risks.

But that’s not what gender identity is. It is much more innate. It is a visceral feeling. It’s not the same as whether you get a tattoo or what you have for dinner. It’s not a decision. It’s a fact about who you are.

I think the challenge in the conversation around gender identity that differs from sexual orientation is that most people who are straight can understand what it feels like to love and to lust. And so they’re able to enter into conversations around sexual orientation with an analogous experience.

The challenge in the conversation around gender identity is that people who aren’t trans don’t know what it feels like to have a gender identity that differs from your sex assigned at birth.

For me, the closest thing that I can compare it to was a constant feeling of homesickness, just an unwavering ache in the pit of my stomach that would only go away when I could be seen and affirmed as myself.

And I think that because we stopped having that conversation, because we stopped creating space for people to ask questions, for people’s understandable — perhaps invasive, but understandable — curiosity to be met with an openness and a grace, not by everyone, but just the people who were willing to do it — we stopped people having an understanding of what it means to be trans. And it allowed them to start to see it. Or it allowed for their pre-existing perception that this is some sort of intellectual choice to manifest.

And in some cases, the perfect “discourse” started to reinforce that.

Say how.

We started to get to this place where you couldn’t be like: I’m born this way.

We policed the way even L.G.B.T.Q. people or trans people talked about their own identities — to be this perfect sort of academic —

Why can’t you say “I’m born this way”? I’m not saying you’re saying it, but this is a thing I’ve not been aware of.

There was sort of an academic perception that people should have agency over their sexual orientation and gender identity, even if it’s not “innate.” And there was this acceptance of a mainstream perception of sexual orientation and gender identity that was a one-size-fits-all narrative around L.G.B.T.Q. people that didn’t necessarily include people whose understanding was more fluid or whose understanding evolved over time or those who feel like they want to transgress gender norms because of a reason that’s not this innate sense of gender.

And when you take that capacity for us to authentically talk about our experience away from us — because it’s not academically the purest narrative that creates space and room for every single, different lived experience within that umbrella — you give people justification to say or think: This is a choice, and if it’s a choice, the threshold to allow for discrimination becomes lower.

I’ve known a number of people who have transitioned as adults.

The degree to which most of us avoid doing anything that would cause us any social discomfort at all times is so profound — how much we live our lives trying to not make anybody look at us for too long.

It must be such a profound need to make that decision — to come to your family, to your wife or your husband, to your kids, to your parents.

So the right-wing meme that emerged around it — that people are transitioning because they opportunistically want to be in another bathroom or in another locker room or get some kind of cultural affirmative action — always struck me as not just absurd but deeply unempathic. Not thinking for a moment what it must mean to want that that much. So then it’s interesting to hear you say that there was a pincer movement on that.

I’m sure there is agency, and people make decisions here. But the pull from inside of everybody I’ve known is really profound. Usually they’ve been trying to choose the other way for a long time — and eventually just can’t anymore.

That’s exactly what my experience was.

It’s funny because sometimes there’s discourse that the only reason I’m an elected official is because I’m trans. I see on the right this notion that I’m a diversity hire.

But it’s like: Well, voters chose me. It’s kind of an insult to voters that they didn’t choose me because they think that I’m the best candidate or reflective of what they want, but they just chose me because of my identity.

But it also just undersells such a larger truth, which is that my life would be so much easier if I weren’t trans.

I’m proud of who I am. I’m proud that this is my life experience for a whole host of reasons. But this is all a lot harder because I’m trans.

Are there moments where I get a microphone or — if I were a nontrans freshman Democrat, would I be sitting here? Maybe not. Maybe I would, but maybe not. We probably would be having a different conversation.

But navigating this world as a trans person has always been — and even more so now — it’s incredibly hard. And all any of us are asking — or at least all that most of us are asking — is to just let us live the best life we can. A life with as few regrets as possible. A life where we can be constructive, productive, contributing members of society.

You might not understand us. It is hard to step into the shoes of someone who is trans and to understand what that might feel like. But I spent 21 years of my life praying that this would go away.

And the only way that I was finally able to accept it was: One, realizing this was never going to go away. Two, becoming so consumed by it that it was the only thing I really was able to think about because the pain became too all-encompassing.

And three, the only way I was able to come out was because I was able to accept that I was losing any future. I had to go through stages of grief. And the only way I was able to come out was to finally get to that stage of acceptance over a loss of any future.

It’s really scary, and it’s really hard. And right now it is particularly scary and hard.

And to your point earlier, most people are good people, and they just want to treat other people with respect and kindness. But unfortunately, in this moment, in our politics — we were recently at something where someone gave us some information, and they said that when a voter was asked to describe the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, it was “crazy” for the Republican Party and “preachy” for the Democratic Party.

I think that undersells something that’s more true, which is that a voter will look and say: The Republican Party is [expletive] to other people. I don’t like that. But the Democratic Party is an [expletive] to me. And if I have to choose between the party that’s an [expletive] to me because I’m not perfect or a party that’s an [expletive] to someone else, even if I don’t like it, I’m going to choose the party that’s an [expletive] to someone else.

When you entered Congress, you were quite directly targeted by some of your Republican colleagues, led by Nancy Mace, on which bathrooms you could use — a thing that would not have happened if you were not a trans legislator.

This is the majority party in the House. You have to work with these people. You’re on committees with them. What has your experience been like both absorbing that and then trying to work with people whom you know may or may not have given you much grace in that moment?

The first thing I’d say is that the folks who were or are targeting me because of my gender identity in Congress are folks who, at this point, are really not working with any Democrats and can barely work with their own Republican colleagues.

I’ve introduced several bills. Almost all have been bipartisan. I’ve been developing relationships with colleagues on the other side of the aisle. Part of my responsibility in this moment is to show that when someone like me gets elected to public office, we can do the whole job. And that means working with people who disagree with me, including on issues that are deeply personal.

The folks who are coming after me — I mean, look, that’s been hard. But I know that they are coming after me not because they are deeply passionate about bathroom policy. They’re coming after me because they’re employing the strategies of reality TV. And the best way to get attention in a body of 435 people is to throw wine in someone’s face. That gets you a little attention. But if the person you’re throwing wine on, if they respond by throwing wine in your face, it creates a beef, which gets you a season-long story arc.

I knew that they were trying to bait me into a fight to get attention, and I refused to be used as a political pawn. I refuse to give them not only the power of derailing me but the incentive to continue to come after me.

And this was a prime example of fighting smart that is demonized on our own side. Because the grace that I didn’t get wasn’t just on the right. There was a lot of critique on the left.

I understand that, when you’re a first, people viscerally feel your highs, and they also viscerally feel your lows. But what would my fighting back in that moment have done? It wouldn’t have stopped the ban, and it would only have incentivized further attacks and continued behavior like that.

Sometimes we have to understand that not fighting, not taking the bait, is not a sign of weakness. It’s not unprincipled. Discipline and strategy are signs of strength.

And I think in the social media world, we have lulled ourselves into thinking the only way to fight is to fight. It’s to scream and it’s to yell and it’s to do it in every instance. And any time you don’t do it, you’re normalizing the behavior that’s coming your way.

It’s a ridiculously unfair burden to place on every single human being — to have to fight every single indignity.

But also by that logic, the young Black students who were walking into a school that was being integrated in the late ’50s and ’60s, who were walking forward calmly and with dignity and grace into that school as people screamed slurs at them — by that definition, that student was normalizing those slurs by not responding.

Instead, what that student was doing was providing the public with a very clear visual, a very clear contrast, between unhinged hatred and basic dignity and grace, which is fundamental to humanity.

And for me, one of the things that I struggled with after that was the lack of grace that I got from some in my own community, who said that I was reinforcing the behavior of the people who were coming after me, that I was not responding appropriately to the bullying that I was facing.

When the reality is: That behavior has diminished significantly because I removed the incentive for them to continue to do it. Because the incentive was so blatantly about attention, and I wasn’t going to let them get the attention that they wanted.

You’re reminding me of something I heard Barack Obama say many years ago when he was getting criticized for trying to negotiate, trying to reach out to people who, by that point, many on the left thought he was naive for trying to work with.

And he said something like: He had always felt that the American people could see better if the other side had clenched their fist, if he opened his hand.

I always thought there was a lot of wisdom in that.

Yes, absolutely. Early on in those first few weeks, I had some folks text me as I was responding the way that I was. And they said: You should watch “42,” which is the movie about Jackie Robinson.

I am not comparing my experience to Jackie Robinson’s at all. At all. But there’s a scene in that movie that’s so illustrative of these dynamics: He’s meeting with the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers is trying to provoke him into anger. And when he sort of succeeds, the owner basically says to him: You have to understand that when you are a first, if you respond to a slur with a slur, they’ll only hear yours. If you respond to a punch with a punch, they’ll say: You’re the aggressor.

If we go in and say to these folks: We’re never going to work with you, because you’re never going to work with us — then we get the blame for never working with them. Not them.

If we go in and we respond to their hatred with vitriol and anger, they’re going to blame us. And that’s the reality of the double standard in our politics. That’s the reality that a first always has to navigate.

Let them put their anger, their vitriol, on full display. Let us provide that contrast with our approach.

Look, it’s not going to always work out, and it’s not always going to create the outcome that you desire. But people need us to demonstrate that contrast to them, for them to truly see it.

I’ve been having a conversation in a very different context than this, but I’m curious to hear your answer to it.

I’ve been having this conversation about whether or not good politics always requires clear enemies. Do you believe it does?

No. I believe that you can tell a compelling story with an enemy. There’s no question. It sometimes is an easy out in our politics.

But I think that there’s something to be said about a politics that is rooted in opposition to an enemy that is fundamentally that regressive. That anger is fundamentally conservative in its political outcome.

Barack Obama — and Bill Clinton, for that matter — did a good job of putting forward an aspirational politics that wasn’t defined by who we are against but by what we are for and about who we can be.

And I think that is a more successful path for progressive politics than an enemies-based politics, which so often devolves to anger. And which, more often than not, facilitates in the medium- and long-term, a regressive politics.

Look, I’m not saying it can’t always be effective politics. But you can have effective politics and good politics and better outcomes with an aspirational politics. With a politics that isn’t just about what it’s opposed to, but about what it can build and about who we can be.

Because I think everyone has their own internal struggle between their own better selves and their better angels and their base instincts.

Much earlier in the conversation I had asked you about liberalism, which was a little bit of a weird question to drop in there.

I don’t really have a question here, it’s just something I’m thinking about. But you actually strike me as one of the most liberal as a temperament — liberal in the classical sense — politicians I’ve talked to in a long time.

And I’ve been starting to read a lot of older books about liberalism because it feels to me that it is an approach to politics that even liberals lost.

Yes.

And one of the reasons I think we lost it — and I very much count myself as a liberal — was a feeling that liberalism’s virtue was also its vice. That its openness to critique, its constant balancing, its movement toward incremental solutions and its skepticism of total solutions — that those had been conditions under which problems never truly got solved. Systemic racism and bigotry festered.

And as it began to absorb that critique, it lost a lot of confidence in itself.

In a way, Barack Obama was the apex of the liberal leaders, and he hadn’t brought about utopia. And so liberalism seemed exhausted.

And I think alongside that, there was some way in which I cannot — I still need to figure this out, but I’ll say it because I believe it’s true: I think there’s something about the social media platforms that is illiberal as a medium.

We now have X and Bluesky and Threads, and none of them are good. They all lead to bad habits of mind. Because simplifying your thoughts down to these little bumper stickers and then having other people who agree with you retweet them or mob you just doesn’t lend itself to the pluralistic balancing modes of thought that liberalism is built to prize. They’re illiberal in a fundamental way.

So I don’t think it’s an accident that as liberalism began to lose its own moorings, illiberalism roared back.

And just one experience I’ve had of this whole period with Donald Trump’s second term is realizing that the thing that we were trying to keep locked in the basement was really profoundly dangerous. Even compared to his first term.

The attacks on due process, the trying to break institutions, the disappearance machine — if you let that all out, things can go really badly.

And there’s something about liberalism that is so unsatisfying. The work you just described having to do sounds so unsatisfying and frustrating. And yet.

I guess just that — and yet.

And yet it is the approach and the system that, while imperfect, is the most likely and most proven to actually lead to the progress that I and so many others seek.

Look, people have one life. And it is completely understandable that a person would feel: I have one life, and when you ask me to wait, you are asking me to watch my one life pass by without the respect and fairness that I deserve. And that is too much to ask of anyone.

And that is. It is our job to demand “now,” in the face of people who say “never.” But it’s also our job to then not reject the possibility for a better tomorrow as that compromise.

I truly believe that liberalism, that our ability to have conversations across disagreement, that our ability to recognize that in a pluralistic, diverse democracy, there will inevitably be people and positions that hurt us. But when you’re siloed and when you suppress that opposition underground in that basement — to use your word — they’re alone in there. And not only does that sense of community loneliness breed bitterness, but it also breeds radicalization.

Liberalism is not only the best mechanism to move forward, but it is also the best mechanism to rein in the worst excesses of your opposition.

Yes, the compromise is that you don’t get to do everything you want to do. But that is a much better bet than the alternative, which is what we have developed now — an illiberal democracy in so many ways in our body politic.

One where, yes, we might have temporary victories, but as we are seeing right now, those victories can be fleeting, and the consequences can be deadly.

Was this always your political temperament, or was it forged?

I have grown and changed. There are things that I did and said five, 10, 15 years ago that I look back and regret, because I think that they were too illiberal. Because I bought into a culture online that didn’t always bring out the best in me.

But I do think that those were exceptions, and even when I was an advocate, I was always perceived as one of the more mainstream respectability advocates. I was always considered someone who was too willing to work across disagreement and engage in conversations that we shouldn’t be having. I was always considered someone who was too willing to work within the system.

And so I think I’ve fundamentally always had the same perspective and fundamentally have always believed that we cannot eliminate grace from our politics and our change-making. And that’s rooted in watching my parents grow and change after I came out.

My parents are progressive people. They embraced my older brother, who’s gay, without skipping a beat. But I knew when I shared that I was trans with them, it was going to be devastating — to use a word that my mother uses. And I knew that if I responded by shutting down the conversation, by refusing to walk with them, by refusing to give them grace and assume good intentions when they would inevitably say and do things that might be hurtful to me, I would stunt their capacity to take that walk with me.

I saw us as a family move forward with a degree of grace toward each other, that we were all going to inevitably say and do things that we would come to regret, that might hurt a little bit, but that if we assumed good intentions and walked forward, my parents would go from saying: What are the chances that I have a gay son and a trans child? — from a place of pity to a place of awe and the diversity of our family and the blessings that have come with that diversity. And that only came from grace.

And then I saw it working in Delaware, passing nondiscrimination protections. I’ve seen it time and time again. And so I have borne witness to change that once seemed so impossible to me as a kid that it was almost incomprehensible not only become possible but become a reality, in large part because of grace in our politics. And yes, because I was willing to extend that grace to others.

Grace, blessings, witness — are these, for you, religious concepts?

They tap into my religion. I’m Presbyterian. I’m an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church.

But I think they go to something for me that transcends religion and my faith, and tap into my sense of beauty toward the world and my sense of beauty at life and the joy that I get to live this life, that I get to be myself and that I get to live a life of purpose.

I know I’m lucky in that respect, and I want everyone to have that same opportunity. And I have seen that approach and that grace. It has allowed me to be a better version of myself, a happier version of myself, which I think has actually unlocked those opportunities.

That’s interesting. Is it a practice?

When you say that it has allowed you to be a better version of yourself, is that something that you cultivate intentionally? And if so, how?

Yes. I think it’s often an intentional choice.

So many of the problems that we face are rooted in the fact that hurt people hurt people.

And I think that we are in this place where we are in this fierce competition for pain. Where the left says to the right: What do you know about pain, white, straight, cis man? My pain is real as a queer, transgender person.

And then the right says to the left: What do you know about pain, college-educated, cosmopolitan elite? My pain is real in a postindustrial community ravaged by the opioid crisis.

We are in this competition for pain when there is plenty of pain to go around. And every therapist will tell you that the first step to healing is to have your pain seen and validated. While it requires intentionality and effort sometimes, I think we would all be better off if we recognized that we don’t have to believe that someone is right for what they’re facing to be wrong.

I also think that there’s one other aspect of this that I think we have lost, which is the intentionality of hope. We have fallen prey in our online discourse and our politics to a sense that cynicism is in vogue, that cynicism shows that we get it.

And I think one of the things that we have to recognize is sometimes hope is a conscious effort. And that sense of inevitability, that organic sense of hope that we felt in this post-1960s world, is the exception in our history.

And you have to step into the shoes of people in the 1950s, people in the 1930s, people in the 1850s, and to move past the history that we view with the hindsight of inevitability and go into those moments and recognize: Every previous generation of Americans had every reason to give up hope.

And you cannot tell me that the reasons for hopelessness now are greater than the reasons for hopelessness then.

So you’re saying there’s something audacious about hope?

There is something audacious —

Some audacity in it.

You have to summon it. You have to summon it.

Optimism is about circumstance. It’s about evaluating likelihood. Hope is something that transcends that.

And when we lull ourselves into this sense of cynicism and we give up on hope, that is when we lose.

My editor has this habit of sharing these very Delphic sayings that I have to then think about for a while afterward. A week ago, he said to me that cynicism is always stupidity. In the conversation we were having, I didn’t ask him about it.

He is not here to tell me I’m wrong, but I think that what he meant is that cynicism is the posture that we both know what is happening and we know what is going to happen — that we’ve seen through the performance into the real, grimy, pathetic backstage, and we know it’s rigged. We know it’s plotted and planned. And so it’s this knowing posture of idiocy.

It’s that. And it’s easy. It’s easy.

I think that’s the place to end. Always our final question: What are three books you’d recommend to the audience?

To this conversation, I think one of the best books on political leadership and understanding how to foster public opinion change is “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It’s one of my favorite books.

Two, I’ve been reading over time — it’s not new — “These Truths” by Jill Lepore, a one-volume history of the United States that helps to reinforce that so many of the challenges and dynamics that we face in this moment are actually not unique, even if the specifics are, how cyclical our challenges are and our history is.

And then the final one that I’m actually rereading — I read it in the first term of Trump — is “The Final Days” the sequel to “All the President’s Men.” And you realize, reading that, how often it felt like Nixon was going to get away with everything. That he’d stay in office and it would be fine for him. And how many instances that it appeared to be done and that he had won — until Aug. 9, 1974, happened, and he resigned.

And I think for me, it’s a helpful reminder that it often seems impossible until it’s inevitable.

Congresswoman Sarah McBride, thank you very much.

Thank you.

[mooshs-crack-headcanons]

If you're writing for doom now could we get doom slayer's first time with a gender neutral s/o please? Thank you 🙏

I literally did the classic doom guy grin upon opening this ask I was ready and waiting for it and hope this doesn't disappoint!

Disclaimer: Trans masc doom slayer, he's one of those characters I literally don't see as cis so that's my default for him going forward I hope that's alright. Switch Doom Slayer, slight AFAB genitalia terms used for him, and btw also SELF INDULGANT PLOT 🗣

(Gender neutral reader)

Sex is kind of a... touchy subject for him. Just something he never really had much interest in, growing up he always wanted to be military and over his teenage years and into adulthood that was his main focus, his main priority, get good grades and be fit to serve. So he never really did have the time for - that - hell even if he wanted to its not like he really had the skill to so casually talk to people not even fathom getting to know somebody to get into that position in the first place. Not to mention the other factors... with himself, his body, so more ways than one he wasn't at all interested what it had to offer. After all he wanted to be a marine, saving people's lives, that was obviously more important than self pleasure.

But that was... thousands of years ago. And here he was now, the Apex Predator of Hell, the Hellwalker, the Doom Slayer. Still a virgin.

He honestly could give less of a shit, it was a complete understatement of how much of a low list 'priority' (if you could even fucking consider it that) of his considering the unfathomable amount of bullshit he has had to put up through since the Phobos Incident in his original universe.

He's had propositions, all by very ballsy Night Sentinels that actually had the courage to actually come up and talk to him during the rare instances of the Maykrs having him out during non combative down time, still on their leash however, akin to taking a dog on a walk or said dog would bark and growl and snap at the confines of his enclosure dispite the shock collar - and they found that annoying. And a risk.

All propositions he said no to, which he didn't even need Maykr control to decline for, he was much more interested in trying out new weapons the Sentinel barracks provided for him in their training grounds and they were interrupting him getting to play with his new toys. Honestly? It was just rude of them.

And still, after the Ahzrak's crushed head, the Maykrs betrayal, the Sentinel civil war, Valen's betrayal, spending all that unfathomable time with him in that cave, getting shoved in and gasping out of that sarcophagus and continuing his bloody war path it was still the farthest thing from his mind.

Then he met you.

You were... different than people he's met. With how long either people having either fear him, hate him, or respect him but not really as a person but for his strength and conviction instead - you actually took the time to understand him, you actually... treated him like a person. He can't even remember the last time someone did that, probably somewhere in his old ancient life but even still.

He thought at first it was only because he saved your life and gave you a place to stay at the Fortress since you had no where else to since the demons laid your home in ruins, everyone you knew dead - he knows that feeling all too well as well after all. But no, seeing how you carry yourself spoke loud and clear that it wasn't just for base gratitude or some debt, you were kind - genuinely thankful but very kind. With how polite you were to VEGA and how you actually made effort to talk to the Slayer himself, even when he isn't the most social in the world and sometimes his actions could be interpreted as rude: like you speaking to him in one sided conversation as he walks over to his workbench to work on his guns, but he's still listening, hanging on every word you say even if on the outside it's hard to show that. But you keep doing it because you understand that he's listening, never pressuring him to comment on anything until one day he surprises you and does.

Looking back on it he thinks it the first ever thing he's verbally ever said to you, up to this point he's been communicating through slow nods and slight hand gestures. It obviously takes you by surprise as you fall silent in the doorway. He doesn't look all the way back but he glances from the corner of his eye to see the cute flustered look on your face.

Oh you were something truly special.

After everything he's been through it's hard to genuinely scare him anymore, however, coming to terms on his own feelings towards you? Terrified him to death. He recognizes it the mere instant it sets in and it causes a whole body panic within him that his entire being has to stiffen up to contain if not he would completely loose himself.

Scenarios, bloody ones, run through his mind at night for weeks on end. He can't control them, invasive fears that drag him along every time he even thinks of closing his eyes. He's seen so much violence, so much cruelty, so much death. He couldn't imagine what he'd even do with himself if he lost you. But he takes all of it in silent stride, self contained, heavy on his shoulders. Like he always has.

He should've known better you would be quick to catch on. Quick to confront him.

He can't look you in the eye as you address him, asking what's wrong, he's about to set out on a mission with his weapons laid out before him for final assessments to be fully equipped when you've stopped him. There's a knot in his throat as he turns away and is about to pull over the helmet onto his head before you stop him by placing your hands on his arms and tugging them down so you can properly see his face - which only makes the knot swell as he sees you from the corner of his eyes still verting away from you.

You're so... gentle with him he's not exactly sure what to do, his body briefly stiffens all over but his bones simply melt with your warm touch he can't help but slowly relax as you just gently hold him. Your palms are so soft as they come up to greet the roughness of his face, his brows narrow together for a bit before he finds your not directly looking at him either - until you notice he's looking at you and you stare at one another. Your eyes are really pretty.

In a snap the moment ends end you let go of his face and clear your throat, cheeks tinted.

"I know fighting helps you clear your head so I'm sorry for keeping you... just promise you'll come back safe, alright?" You ask him to promise, uneasy he swallows and nods, about to grab his shotgun from off the table next to him before suddenly your hand is back cupping his cheek and pepping a quick kiss on the partnering one by standing on your tiptoes. Before his brain even process it your scurried off to the other room, leaving him standing there.

His hand that was on the shotgun unclasps it and slowly, clumsily, finds it's way onto your kiss.

Oh.

Things are... a little bit different afterwards. Neither of you have really said anything about feelings necessarily out loud but there's more physical affection than before. It scared him, honestly, but if there's one thing about you he's come to really love and appreciate it's exactly how patient and slow you were willing to take things - even if it meant just learning how to hold hands for awhile. His hands are so much bigger than yours, they swamp them when gently he entangles them. He felt like just with your hand alone as if he was holding the entire world.

Kissing was another thing, anxiety sweltering in him the first couple times, but again, thanks to your help it was something else to mentally conquer. He loves kissing you, how soft your lips are, how they taste so nice, it nearly makes him dizzy - makes you dizzy too, hell, smugass in him thinks he just might have a talent for it (he teases, he teases)

Then there was the elephant in the room, the topic he wasn't sure if ever he could come out and say but you had to figure it out on your own one night.

You've helped him treat injuries before, nothing too severe as his body with all thousands of years of Hellic bullshit has adjusted to quite a lot to inhuman degrees, but he was still human at the end of the day. One mission he'd been to careless and too lost in the rage and blood-lust that he had came out with a large gash on his size that would be impossible to treat on the field, the Slayer Suit can only fix so much, so he comes back through the portal pooling with blood that pours out of the wound from his exposed breech in his suit and he can barely only hold on to consciousness to hear your panicked plea out from him before he collapses on the floor.

He wakes up staring at the ceiling of his room, VEGA's voice loud in his ear over the entercom yet muffled until sleep fades from his being bit by bit, last part he hears clearly is stern warnings that he should've listened to the retreat suggestions when the armor faulty was urgently reported - but the last hoard of demons were circling that village, he couldn't just abandon them.

"It appears you didn't hear my suggestion the five times I had sent it. In future reference, would six suffice?" He knows the AI means well but he can't help the cheeky middle finger.

He then looks down to get a proper look at the state of himself, he laid shirtless in bed with bandage wrap around his stomach. Your doing, too human of work to be one of the Fortress' drones. That being said he looks at the deep ugly scars underlining his chest with a deep sigh, his head falling back to the pillow propped under him.

Guess he couldn't make up a freaky cool war story about those, huh? Shit.

His hand itches around the old Argent implant in thought. He should be honest with you, he's always honest with you, he's just... never had to tell anyone, like this anyway, recruitment people for the Marines knew but never really gave a shit he thinks - he was really big and really good with a gun, perfect solider material. Why would they give a shit what's in or not in his pants? But with you it's obviously different.

Speaking of you, the door to his room clicks and slides open automatically as you come in with your arms completely full with the thick and deceptively heavy box of a medkit - on instinct his body moves to get up and go help you carry it only for the sharp stabbing in his side to remind himself of the shape he's in. You quickly set the box down to ease him back properly in bed, which he relents, letting his bones jelly out as he watches you huff through your nose before with an (admittedly cute) growl you lift the box over onto the edge of the bed before popping it open revealing the large packs of blue healing gel and rolls of bandages - treating him did take a lot of resources after all.

"How are you feeling?" You ask, not looking at him directly but he could make out you glancing over at him from the corner of your eye to receive his usual non verbal response; which this time he leaves as a light uneven nod - he wasn't dead. That should be good enough. With one pack of gel in hand you step over closer to his bedside.

"Is it alright if I change your bandages? They're stained now the gels worn off." He looks down at himself, he spots the red tinted spot on the cloth but he stares longer further upwards directly underneath his chest. He swallows then nods once more.

You already did them once why bother asking to do it again? Just do it. He would add if it weren't on the physical strain it takes to speak. But then he realizes how that'd sound and remembers the patience you have with him, this was clearly just a part of it. You undo the bandages off of him and set them off to the side somewhere, his wound still bled from the cracks of the dried blue healing layer that ate slowly to his recovery, normally with regular humans it wouldn't take a whole bunch but he's anything but ordinary so for wounds of this extent he couldn't just shake off it takes several to really do anything to him, or maybe it was because of how adjusted he was to Argent engery long to this point it had the same less effective functionality to him, like taking the same kind of medication every time your sick. But over thousands of years.

You open the pack and begin to lather his side with it, the gel drying and sealing icy cold with that prickling feeling he's use to. Then another pack, and another, and another and so until eventually the area grows numb with full effect. He eases back into the mattress without even realizing he'd tensed up, that being the sign for you to take that enough had been applied and you grab the bandage roll to begin wrapping around him, though making him sit up slightly to get it on more proper.

"Couple more hours it'll need to be reapplied again but it did look much better than it did." You tell him, beginning to put supplies away. It's quiet for a long moment.

"You had me scared, you know? Coming back like that - why didn't you retreat when VEGA told you to?" You don't sound angry at him, you're very calm all things considered, but it still doesn't deter the guilty feeling in his stomach.

"People."

You look at him. So soft and sad it hurts. You reach over and hold his hand.

"You can't help people when you're hurt." He knows. And he knows you know.

"I'm sorry. It was a stupid mistake - adrenaline - got to my head and... moved wrecklessly. It was stupid."

Especially so, he's been doing this for unconceivably long he should know better but he slipped, anger got the better of him and he took to long on an execution to react to a Marauder blade catching him like that, taking advantage of weak point he deliberately left open not wanting to abandon the village to repair his suit. Ignoring VEGA's several warnings. Though, on this level of a fuck up it did make him feel like a rookie Marine again - in a sick and twisted way.

You draw him out of his thoughts and slipping memories when you lean over to press a soft brief kiss to his lips, still holding a comforting squeeze on his hand. Before he can bring himself to respond you rest your head on his chest, still sitting on the edge of the bed beside him but now tucked into him and using him as a pillow. Whatever he was going to say didn't matter then. He looks down at you, how your eyes were lazily closed but still clearly awake, you looked so... delicate, small compared to him. It takes a lot of strength to gather the courage but gently, so he doesn't accidentally harm you, he pats your head.

A passing while it hits him, the dread and discomfort he was feeling about his scars and what they meant had completely faded away. Here you were laying on them, didn't address them once.

...but he had to. It would eat at him if he didn't.

You'd nearly fallen asleep until he gently shakes you awake, pushing you to sit up with serious intent to talk. He tries the best he could explaining, honestly he isn't sure how to explain the exact feeling he's always had since that day Grandma Taggart put him in that Easter dress and it felt horribly wrong and how on the other hand how rightfully good it felt dreaming of being a combat hero just like his great-great grandfather BJ Blazkowicz, the man who literally killed Hitler. Both at the age of nine. He wasn't sure if it made sense, it was how he explained to his parents and they were luckily very supportive, but they were also his parents... so to cut it short your potential reaction terrified him. But it shouldn't, he know it shouldn't, and with how you just look at him confirms that.

"You're still you. You who have all these admirable, brave, kind, heroic-if-not-self-sacrificing aspects. You made yourself. You're the man who saved me and showed me there is still justice in this cruel existence - the man I fell in love with."

He's so distracted of the dam of relief of your support breaking that he nearly doesn't catch the last part you said. Bronze eyes turn wide, lips parted, he looks at you as if he thought himself in a dream and looks to nearly start slapping himself awake until you press another kiss to his lips, this time he stiffs but ultimately melts into it. More relaxed by each second.

When you two pull away there's a haziness in the air, carefully, you move to properly lay at the Slayer's side being mindful of his still present injury only tucked away behind a good couple tight circuits of cloth and wrap your arms around him to take in his warmth, head buried in his neck. The haze grows tiring, sleep creeps heavy on his eyelids and you too seemingly are not that far behind as your yawn is warm on his skin. The lights in the room dim, embarrassing reminder of the AI omnipresent throughout the whole Fortress but particularly now in this room. But nevermind that, he looks down at you and your sleepy form with the desire to speak - however his throat seems to be against him as he strains to, seemingly reached his limit of words tonight. But maybe it was for the best as now he could be up your soft snoring.

He loved you too.

He loves you so much. So much it still terrifies him, however, like always you're there to quell his fears, his doubts, second thoughts, you comfort him in a way he has never been before. You were something so truly special to him. Before long... desires strike.

Very brief at first. Surges that come from sudden touches, grazes, glances. But he's able to quickly shake it off without really realizing it.

...until he does.

He realizes when his touch lingers for a couple moments too longer, his eyes start to wonder when you're not looking, you start visiting his dreams...

He's deeply ashamed of it, so embarrassed with his face a scolding red he doesn't think he's felt in anyway besides letting out extreme rage on the battlefield, speaking of, there's where he takes it out on - either waking up in the dead of night and immediately mad dashing to his training arena to let of steam or if really, really, really bad he'll set off on a quick mission to slaughter some demons in hope to settle himself out.

So, not healthy ways to take care of it. He's aware of that. Still feeling ashamed.

He should've expected you to figure it out at some point, after months of this he's grown unintentionally distant from you, and he should've also expected for you to address it in some way.

Half dressed in his bed wasn't how he would've expected it however.

There seems to be a delay in between his eyes and brain to process the shocking sight before him, you usually always come to greet him when he returns home from demon excursions and you not being there this time is what led him to search without properly stripping off his suit, his boots are practically cement in the ground as he stands in the doorway of what had become in the past year your shared bedroom. But maybe he should've assumed something was up, VEGA had seemed purposely aloof and dense on where you could've been located or what you had been doing when he asked, you two must've planned on this.

...but how could he be upset when you wore one of the baggiest shirts you owned that were pushed up to reveal his boxers underneath around your thighs? He wasn't a religious man but good God.

He doesn't need to be talked into, he wants and needs you, the fear and anxiety is still there and eats at him but he knows with you it's going to be okay - he couldn't do this with anybody else in every universe and realm imaginable but you.

First piece of the armor to come off is the helmet as he stands by the edge of the bed and you up on your knees practically rip it off and toss it across the room to meet him in a feverish kiss. One by one each piece is removed and fallen to the floor with a heavy clunk, leaving him in only the tight black bodysuit he wears underneath. Your lips never part, your fingers find them tight short cropped dark brown hair that your drag him down so you can fall on your back, parting the kiss in heavy breaths as you feel yourself up and let the shirt ride up your stomach to expose more skin, your spine then arches as you softly plea for him to touch you.

He treats you so gently as if one wrong move would break you, he's a big man after all - his hands have ripped and tore through hordes of legions of Hell alone in his self brought bloody crusade against demonkind, they've been twisted, crafted for violence for so long... deep down unknownst to himself he's been desperate for human touch but he's scared to death of not being capable of returning it, even more so of it decaying completely and his affection hurts you - or worse. He kills everything he touches.

That fear is always in the back of his mind even when he tries his damndest to pretend to you it isn't.

His large hands are warm on your skin, traveling and caressing everything he can but nothing too grounded. His face is buried in your neck peppering kisses along the base of your throat, taking in your soft hums and feels almost dizzy with your fingers in his hair encouraging his movements. Your thighs are wrapped tight around his waist as he sat stiff on his knees in between your legs and bent over top of you on the bed.

"Flynn, Flynn," You huff in pleasure, encouraging him to do more - but it hits him... he isn't exactly sure what 'more' is. Okay no, he knows what 'more' is but he doesn't... how does he...? What is he doing?

"Flynn?" As always it doesn't take you long to notice. He stares down at you honest, he tries speaking with no success.

You study his face, your eyes drifting downwards then noticed how his arms holding himself up above you slightly trembled - something he didn't even realize - it clicks for you.

"You haven't... oh." There's several emotions across your face, all in some kind of thought, before you lean up and guide him to reverse your positions: him on his back and you above him.

"I can take care of you if that's okay." He looks at you for a long moment, an inner fight within himself that he succumbs to one side completely, he needed you more than anything.

'Please.' He mouths.

You didn't expect him to be this loud, you know, given how he carries himself normally. And honestly? He didn't either. But he can't help all the noise that slips out, how his chest pants and rocks for breath, the mere instant you touch him - delicately if barely at all your fingers graze at his folds that got him shooting his head back further into the pillow at his head and his thick thighs, marred with centuries old battle scars, tremble upon themselves as he still manages to keep them bowed back for you.

Your touch lit his skin on fire that not even the deepest pits of Hell he's literally has crawled out of out could compare - and you basically hadn't done anything to him yet.

He doesn't falter, you have stopped but he grips on the mattress (mindful he doesn't tear it) underneath him and lightly raises his head up to look at you with large bronze colored eyes.

"..." His mouth hangs open, all of his might he tries to push words out but he physically can't, they knot and bunch up in his throat and stab at him if he further tries pushing it. But it's okay as your hands, so small and delicate compared to his mass, feather-light trace up the churning muscle of his stomach and up to his chest where you gently push him back down.

He looks at you then everything fades, fear, anxieties, everything melts away. Only replaced by calm. He peers down to see how the top of your hand is barely masked by the thick layer of chest hair and he slowly reaches up cup it, make you hold down on him in your palm tight. He was still with you through this... you now in between his legs.

He hums, he groans, whines, and curses through barred teeth as your fingers pump his hole - one or two or three fingers weren't nearly enough so you practically have your whole hand in there fucking him senseless. His body twitches, pulses, almost spasming with his how good he felt but he tries not to make too sudden or harsh of movements not to accidentally hurt you as he is still very much larger than the average human, but it's rather quite difficult when you're treating him this well.

But he needed more.

He wants to plea but physically can't form the words, only pathetic noises left in their wake as his hips bounce to meet your thrusting hand - it felt good, so good that tears blot in his eyes he fails to realize until you bend down to kiss them away. You actually keep kissing, your fingers still keeping quick pace at him, you kiss under his jaw to his neck to his chest to his stomach - lower and lower until your crouched down with your breath so electrifying on his sex as you hover before you completely engulf the fat numb of his clit in your mouth. All struggles of forming words together are completely shoved out.

"FUCk!" He shouts out, eyes wide, underneath him not just the sheets tear but as well as the mattress with claw marks left by his hands.

His chest heaves with every breath he takes, you suck and swirl your tongue around him at the same time still fucking his hole with nearly your entire fist it's easy to be over stimulated but he's hanging on every second in pure ecstasy.

"-more, more, more, more, more-" He huffs, hands clutch tighter onto the tore mattress even if he has the desire to grab ahold of your head to encourage an even faster pace but he's terrified of accidentally hurting you being not in control of his own strength to something so... intense like this. He'd rather you in control of the reigns.

He gasps as he suddenly feels dragged high without warning, the churning that's been building in his stomach snaps and his eyes roll to the back of his head as pleasure like he's never felt before washing over him. His body feels hot, his bones melt, and the only grounded feeling he has is the twitching he's aware of around your soaked hand.

He's wheezing, actually wheezing to catch his breath, feeling starts to return to his body just has you slip your hand out. He looks at you in what he'd probably guess if he were to look at himself as pathetic but you in return look at him soft; small smile on your lips as you meet to kiss him again - letting him have a taste of himself.

"How was that?" You ask.

'Good.' He mouths.

"You okay for more?" He still feels woozy but he nods, a wicked grin flashes across your face.

"Good."

Before he can question it or gather the strength to lift himself up to see what you were pulling from out under the bed he sees its a box. You hand it over to him, who sluggishly finally is able to sit up to open it and-

It was a strap-on.

Oh so you really planned this.

He couldn't help but to laugh at it at first, dumb looking green toy that was at a.... generous size - you called it fitting, he's a big man after all - but you know what? As stupid as it looked? It felt right, on him. Seeing a cock on him, even if it was green (you added green was also his color, so) and seeing your tiny hand stroking around such a big size REALLY starts doing something to him.

You put your mouth on it, even if it technically did nothing seeing your mouth stretch and gag around it really does more to him - even bucks his hips but he controls himself not to accidentally hurt your throat. His moans are low and huffy, completely contrast to the whining mess he was earlier, his eyes fall slacked and lazy as he watches you until you come up gasping for breath.

You've already been out of your shirt but putting his large hands on your hips do you make him take his boxers off you, grabbing and groping handfuls of ass as he goes and you wiggle free to be both completely naked together. The plastic of the strap is warm and wet from your previous activity but it brushes nicely against your thighs before you can't help yourself but rock into it.

"Flynn," You hum and you moan until you grab a hold of it and align it with yourself, hovering over it to look at your lover for one last confirmation. "-ready?"

"Please." He breathily pleads.

You sink yourself so full down onto it that your breath disapates from your body and you forget how to breathe for a second, his touch on you to keep you straddled riding on his waist being the only thing keeping you grounded.

"Are... you alright?" You flash him a dumb grin.

"Yeah. Your dicks huge, you know?"

He looks away from that, clearly flustered. His dick. Validating praises seemed to do something. You keep that in mind. Small movements at first you keep a steady rhythm. He goes along with it, encouraging your movements by his hands guiding your hips with each increasingly wet thrusts.

They grow faster and harder over time, you cooing out praises seem to increase them further until you are no longer in control of the rhythm as you are throughly fucked up and down until suddenly your pushed to your back where you loose control over your own voice. He leans over you, holding your legs up over his shoulders as he fucks you so deep - all previous fears and insecurities he's shown over the night gone, as he finally trusts himself with you, he won't hurt you.

"I love you," He says taking you by complete shock as he hasn't voiced the sentiment out loud before.

"I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I-" Over and over he repeats raspy and strained as his voice tends to be but it means so much to you - you mean so much to him - he choices to fight through whatever pain to make sure it is said loud and clear and is known and you are loudly coming around his cock while he says it to absolutely cement it.

Sweaty and exhausted you two lay in each other's arms once it's all through. Somethings different, yet at the same time it isn't, your skin is so soft under his touch as he traces his fingertips down the width of your back as you're nearly dozed off. It's calm, he has a peace of mind he hasn't had in literally thousands of years - demons the furthest from his mind. It was nice. Really nice. He never wants it to end even though you both know it has to, Hell never quits nor runs dry with demons. But for now? This was more than fine.

Would really like and appreciate to know what you think about what you read in tags on reblogs I absolutely thrive off it, thank you for reading 🫶

[toyboy-molloy]

continued from here

Heinrich was beside himself with nerves. Here he was, accompanying his father and uncle on a friendly visit to Talmberg, and he could do no more than give a silent nod to the young Lord's polite offer to show him around. He was the heir of Rattay, for fuck's sake, he ought to be able to talk to a fellow nobleman. Heinrich paced the courtyard, rehearsing what he might say in his head. He needed advice...

-

Heinrich found his second father in the kitchen, taking advantage of teh polite hospitality of his old friends. He was also alone which Heinrich was relieved about.

"Uncle Henry..."

"Uh oh," he grimaced, putting down his cup of mead to really focus on the youngster, "this sounds serious."

Heinrich sat opposite, looking around the room once more to ensure they really were alone. Still, he leaned forwards anyway, keeping his voice low, "I wanted to ask...about you and father..."

"Yeah?" Henry had a feeling he knew where this was going but he wasn't about to interrupt the boy who was like a son to him.

"It just...how did- I mean, what did you say or...do to- to, erm..."

Henry took pity on the boy, smiling sympathetically, "how did me and your pa become such good friends?"

"Yes," Heinrich sighed in relief. He was so happy he found Henry first; he was more sensitive. The former blacksmith tapped his chin in mock thought.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with the young lord, would it?"

"No!" Heinrich's face flared red and he folded his arms haughtily, looking very much like his father as he did so, "don't be ridiculous."

Henry chuckled, clearly not believing him but he indulged the question anyway; a look of fond reminisce crossed his face as he recalled meeting Sir Hans all those years ago.

"Well, I think I annoyed him into it, honestly," he shrugged matter of factly, "at first, we only spent time together because we were forced to. But I was just there for him. And I didn't take any of his shit," he paused as if a thought just struck him suddenly, "I think he got off on it, actually..."

Heinrich shook his head, sighing deeply, "thanks, uncle Henry."

"At least you and your friend are the same social class," Henry pointed out simply, reaching for his mead again and taking a sip, "do you have any idea how many times your pa threatened me with the stocks because I called him an entitled little bitch?"

"This isn't about Lord Milos!"

Heinrich stormed out of the kitchen, determined to find his father before he was expected to join the new lord and his guards on the walkabout.

-

Hans was pacing in one of the castle's halls, stopping at the window every so often before resuming. He seemed nervous about something. Nevertheless, Heinrich cleared his throat.

"Father-"

"You don't think Henry has gone to see Lady Stephanie, do you?"

Heinrich stared, confused, "what? No, I was just talking to him-"

"Not that i care. I'm not his wife," he laughed unconvincingly, sitting in one of the chairs with his back to the window. He smiled, exaggeratedly, "what's the matter?"

Heinrich sat beside his father, unable to look him in the eyes as he asked, "how do you...impress someone you like?"

"Well, I never had to try very hard," Hans said with a smirk, nudging his son playfully. Heinrich rolled his eyes, "when you find the right person, none of that matters anyway. Just be yourself, you'll have them falling at your feet. Look at you, you could woo anyone you wanted," Heinrich smiled but Hans wasn't finished. He leaned closer, adding, "and if that doesn't work, challenge him to a duel."

"That works?" Heinrich wondered. Hans merely shrugged.

"It did for me."

Heinrich couldn't help but laugh. He was surprised to find he was actually looking forward to the tour.

-

"Hans..." Henry stood by the window, staring down at the combat arena, "our sons are duelling."

Hans joined Henry at the window, feeling full of pride as he clapped his companion on the back, "that's my boy."

"You told him to do that?" Henry said incredulously, watching the two lords battle with training swords. They were both evenly matched. Hans nodded.

"And what words of wisdom did you give him?" The nobleman folded his arms pointedly, "arrive on his doorstep with nothing and enter his service? Maybe if you annoy him enough, he'll sleep with you."

Henry paused before eventually nodding, "aye, something like that."

"Well, I suppose you'll be wanting to visit Lady Stephanie before we depart," Hans said nonchalantly, distracting himself by examining the various books around the room, "I'm sure you have plenty to talk about."

"We already caught up," Henry was saying, glancing out of the corner of his eyes at Hans' reaction. He was nodding frantically, still avoiding looking at Henry. The former blacksmith looked back at their offspring, now laughing together outside the arena, "she told me about her family, I told her about mine."

Hans looked back at him briefly, "your...family."

"Of course, you fool," Henry chuckled, approaching Hans to hug him from behind, "you and Heinrich. And, if things work out, I'll see more of Milos, too."

"I'm glad," Hans turned in Henry's arms, hugging him back properly. He had a thought, then, "that would make them brothers of sorts."

Henry chuckled, "aye, maybe we don't tell them that part."

more heinrich fics

[agamic-capreolate]

ok but many of us AREN’T treated favorably to women in the same position. and there are experiences unique* to transmascs (needing gynecological care but being denied it, needing to be included in conversations about abortion but being ignored. getting baby trapped by cis male chasers, hyperinvisibility, people wanting to detransition us into women for their fetish). most of us experience misogyny even though we don’t identify as women!!!

you can’t just map trans men and women onto the same social phenomena as our cis counterparts. you are assuming we all pass and that most transphobes meaningfully care about the difference between us before they harass us in public. some of us fail to pass as either binary gender on hrt and get treated like circus freaks regardless of whether we are tmasc or tfem!!!

we all get treated like shit in the same and very different ways, and treating trans men as analogous to cis men in some kind of trans equivalent of the patriarchy is ignorant and harmful. trans men do not meaningfully have privilege over trans women. sorry if that fucks up your attempt to “validate” our genders by trying to match them one to one with cis gender roles (or more likely, simplify them for your own comfort). or maybe you’re trying to prove to a certain subset of trans inclusive radfems that you’re one of the good ones 🤡

it feels like y’all hear the word men in trans men and think of a buff skinny white passing trans man and then assign misogynistic dudebro behaviors onto him. it really does.

*im sure there are examples of intersex ppl also having similar issues but this is being framed as transmasc vs transfem so that’s what i mean by unique if that makes sense. not trying to erase intersex ppl >~<

[ogsherlockholmes]

This is incredibly interesting and insightful, and I would like to add a few comments, as someone else who can't help but feel slightly disappointed by certain adaptations.

Generally, I (surprisingly) find older Holmes adaptations, such as Rathbone/Bruce, somehow more faithful to the canon, even though there are clear problems with characterisations (I mention Bruce, despite finding his version of Watson very far removed from the canon). On the whole, these Holmeses are more connected to the 'oddness' which is integral to Holmes: he is never written to be a smooth, suave, debonair seducer, he's noted to be quite unusual and struggles to follow social cues, but not to the point of extreme rudeness. In fact, his peculiarity makes him somewhat charming. So, yes, Peter Cushing's Holmes could be quite harsh at times, but he was still human (it's been a while since I've watched Cushing adaptation's, so correct me if I'm wrong) and wasn't presented as 'eye candy'.

Of course, I can hardly forget Jeremy Brett's Holmes, and will never forgo an opportunity to gush over him and his commitment to accuracy. Personally, I believe that the Brett/Hardwicke/Burke adaptation is the most accurate.

Then we move to the 2000s, and OP is entirely correct on the focus shift to Irene Adler, a character who was only in one story and not mentioned much afterwards. That's not to say she wasn't important, she certainly was, but not in being a sort of sexual awakening as many adaptations make her out to be.

Modern Holmeses are, yes, quite different from the canon, that goes without saying. Part of me argues that, perhaps this is to match the effect of Holmes' character on a Victorian audience with a modern day audience. Meaning, certain features of his character which might not be a big deal now might have been a massive focus when originally written. To use an example entirely different from this, if a 19th century author might want to convey that a character was 'indecent' they might mention a 'reveal' of an ankle or even a thigh, maybe a hairstyle not done as neat as others (God forbid, a woman might have her hair down in the presence of a man). These days, if an author wanted their character to be a bit slutty, there will be a reveal of more than just a thigh... So, these two separate audiences will still have the same emotion conveyed upon them. Going back to Holmes, what was considered rude in the Victorian era isn't as rude these days (or the social etiquette has differed all round), so modern Holmeses need to be ruder than the canon, so we still have that effect.

But here, I disagree with myself, because even in the Victorian era, Holmes was never as rude as House, for example. Or, in the case of RDJ, Holmes was never described to be a slob; his rooms were untidy, yes, but his appearance mattered to him and he made sure to look after himself (in this case, I have to argue that the likes of Cumberbatch with his expensive hair products and Burberry coat are more akin to the canon).

Now that I have mentioned BBCSherlock, I have to admit that I do really enjoy this show still, despite holding back screams at certain moments (most moments). Honestly, I think Watson is mischaracterised just as often in all adaptations, both modern and 20th century, but in terms of the BBC version, I think this Holmes is the closest to canon. Arguments of queerbait aside, (yes, I maintain that they were queerbaiting, but enough has been said about that) I think Cumberbatch!Holmes is more applicable for the argument that his characterisation was trying to have the same effect on the audience as the canon, rather than matching the canon. Yes, rude, but there were just as many moments of genuine human kindness, love even, and he had big emotions, just like the canon. (He did call himself a sociopath but I maintain to this day that was him trying to find a word for himself and being very incorrect, but enough about BBCSherlock.)

I have never liked Enola Holmes (no hate to the creators or people involved); not because I thought the movie was bad, I just wonder why they bothered to relate it to Sherlock Holmes if it was going to be so far removed. I understand that it was an adaptation of a children's book series, so I won't comment on the plot, but I specifically remember watching the movie and wondering what the point of Cavill's Holmes was. It wasn't that he was 'too' good-looking, but he was, dare I say, useless. I'll admit, I can't remember the story entirely, but I was underwhelmed by Holmes' intelligence. No, he needn't be a superhuman, but being clever is a pretty difficult point to miss from Holmes' character.

All this being said (and, yes, I could go on and on about my opinions on all the adaptations I've consumed), I'm going to offer a little bit of mercy to Holmes adapters. As much as I would want a perfect near enough word for word adaptation of the canon (with Johnlock, of course) I understand that, in the modern day, people always want something new. It must be difficult to remain faithful to a story which has been told over and over without boring the audience. Therefore, there's an action movie Holmes made when superhero movies were popular; a TV series whose budget substantially increased and had a wider audience then intended, so had more convoluted storylines which slowly became less connected to the canon; and a Holmes which was more appeasable to a younger crowd, specifically targeted at younger girls and giving them a new character to look up to (even though I dislike it, I recognise that Enola Holmes was intended to be a role-model, and I do respect that).

Take Shakespeare for example: so many people are adaptating his works into so many different versions; i.e, Romeo and Juliet in modern-day America with guns and ecstasy; The Merchant of Venice set during WW2; The Taming of the Shrew with swapped genders; and so on. Writers constantly want to excite/confuse/intrigue the audience in ways which haven't been done, and after many years and many adaptations, the list begins to run out.

Still, I do feel disappointed by what Holmes has become. OP's original statement, 'Sherlock Holmes became an adaptation of an adaptation' is so true, and it does come to a point where it's not an adaptation but an inspiration. In my opinion, I'd argue that House MD is more inspired by Holmes then adapting the canon, since there aren't really many exact plot points included, aside from (spoilers!!) a faked death, drug usage and homoerotic longing. I seriously don't think there's a problem with that, we can't reinvent the wheel, but it would be nice if creators would recognise that the Holmes and Watson they are presenting are not the real Holmes and Watson.

On that note, Fawx&Stallion is a Holmes adaptation worthy of being mentioned- those creators understand Holmes, and that is clear to see.

Sherlock Holmes became an adaptation of an adaptation.

By watching several adaptations, it is possible to see how Holmes' personality begins to change over time, and how some adaptations are very similar to each other, not because they are based on the same book, but because they are based on each other instead of being based on the canon.

For example, the stereotype that Holmes is cold and emotionless, even though in the book Watson indeed says that Holmes is "a machine", Watson still describes him as sensitive, gentle, Holmes compassionate towards the clients who need it most. In addition to the explicit affection he has for Watson and how he respects Watson's feelings.

In older adaptations, Holmes has a personality and attitudes that are more faithful to the books, until the 2000s, Holmes' personality was consistent with the canon.

From the 2000s onwards, the adaptations became increasingly distant from the canon and began to be based on existing versions of the character instead of the canon, and thus a whole new perception of the character was created that did NOT match AT ALL with his original counterpart.

(very long post)

And it's not just Holmes' personality that is affected, but his dynamic with Watson and the history and personality of the other characters ends up being affected. For example, Irene Adler.

Although the interpretation of Irene as Holmes' romantic partner has existed for decades, since the 19th century, and even though she appeared in ONE short story, and was the only woman to beat the great detective, her relevance in having been a woman at that time and having been smarter than Holmes was transformed and reduced to her being Holmes' love interest, BUT even then, there isn't THAT many adaptations where Irene is portrayed this way how people think

First, there is Alice Faulkner, Holmes' romantic partner created by William Gillette, an original character inspired by Irene Adler, but very different from Irene. Holmes helps her and falls in love with her, kinda cute. (almost everyone knows) William Gillette is also responsible for the image of Holmes with the big pipe and the famous phrase never said by the canon Holmes "Elementary, my dear Watson". This is where the first influence on the other adaptations begins.

William Gillette's Holmes inspired the adaptations by Clive Brook and John Barrymore. Brook's version Holmes has a wife like Alice, and Barrymore's version is an adaptation of Gillette's film.

‼️This is all referring specifically to visual media such as movies and tv shows.

From decades before until the 1950s (not included), there is no Irene Adler. Of the more than 30 adaptations, four of them have an original female character as a romantic partner to Holmes. From the 50s to the 80s (not included), there are 30 other film and television adaptations. Where Irene only appears in 1976 in “Sherlock Holmes In New York” with Roger Moore as Holmes, and I believe that this is perhaps the FIRST version where Irene and Holmes really have a romance.

In this movie, half of the time, it is shown how Holmes loves Irene Adler and misses her, until a case ends up taking him to New York, to meet the woman he loves so much, BUT in the end, after he discovers that he has a son with Irene, he simply decides that he cannot stay with her and their son, because he has a whole life in London and cannot leave everything like that. Father of the year.

Before that, of course, there is “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” in 1970 by Billy Wilder, where he has the character of Gabrielle, which may have been the starting point for Irene Adler's transformation.

There were two adaptations in the 1970s where a man ends up in a type of psychosis that makes him believe he is Sherlock Holmes and a doctor named, by coincidence of course, Watson, and she is the one who helps him. In the first film, “They Might Be Giants,” Holmes and Dr. Watson fall in love.

At this time, it has the movie “The Seven Per-Cent Solution,” where Freud helps Holmes overcome his “aversion to women” and at the end of the movie, Holmes meets a potential female love interest.

Of all the 33 films from this period [50s-80s], there is ONE movie where Holmes is implicitly homosexual, ONE movie where H&W fall in love, ONE movie where Holmes has an original female romantic partner and ONE movie where Holmes and Irene Adler were a couple.

Irene only appears then in the “Soviet Holmes” series from (1979), where although it seems that Holmes may have feelings for her, she is not a love interest.

From the 80s to the 2000s (not included), of the almost 40 film and television adaptations, Irene Adler only appears THREE TIMES.

In 1984 in the film with Peter Cushing “The Mask of Death”, where Holmes seems grumpy with the mere presence of Irene and complains about how he lost to a woman. In the same year also Irene appears in “Granada Holmes” which is probably the most faithful adaptation of the tale of the Scandal in Bohemia.

Irene only appears AGAIN in 1991 in “The Leading Lady” with Christopher Lee, where Irene has no self-respect whatsoever and has only one mission in this movie, which is to marry Holmes. She literally says that she DOESN’T CARE IF HOLMES DOESN’T LOVE HER, she wants to marry him and ends baby trapping him.

In 1994, there was the pilot episode of the series that would be called “Baker Street: Sherlock Holmes Returns”, which is a remake of the 1987 pilot episode “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”. In the first version, Holmes wakes up from cryogenics and meets Watson’s granddaughter, Jane, and from her, he learns that it is okay to be gay in the 80s. In the second version, Holmes is found by a doctor named Winslow who falls in love with him, but Holmes shows no interest in her.

In the late 90s, there is “Shirley Holmes”, who is Holmes' great-great-granddaughter-niece (?), her father is a Holmes and her mother is a doctor named Joanne. There is also “My Dearly Beloved Detective” where H&W kiss, the movie is mainly about love.

From this period, of the three times that Irene appears, only once she is a love interest and other THREE adaptations that put H&W in a romantic position.

So until the 2000s, of the more than one hundred adaptations, Irene is Holmes' love interest ONLY TWICE.

Of about 61 film and series adaptations produced since the 2000s till this day, EIGHT adaptations have Irene Adler as Holmes' romantic partner and another EIGHT adaptations where Holmes has other originals female characters as romantic partners.

And hust because I'm a math teacher:

It's worth noting that the number of adaptations (movies and tv shows) in 25 years is almost equivalent to the number of adaptations (movies and tv shows) in ONE CENTURY.

From the first sample of adaptations (movies and tv shows) from the period 1900-1999, there were 104 adaptations.

Irene as a romantic partner: 2 (± 2%)

Original Female Character: 4 (± 3.8%)

H&W in a romantic situation (corresponding or not, explicit or not): 4 (± 3.8%)

From the second sample of adaptations (movies and tv shows) from the period 2000-2025, there were 61 adaptations.

Irene as a romantic partner: 8 (± 13%)

Original Female Character: 8 (± 13%)

H&W in a romantic situation (corresponding or not, explicit or not): 7 (± 11.5%)

Irene Adler as love interest from the 2000s onwards:

“The Royal Scandal” with Matt Frewer, their relationship is implicit, this movie sucks, but other Frewer movies are good, as is Clive Merrison, Frewer is one of the only actors who has a voice that most closely matches the description of Holmes' voice in the canon. Also in the television film “Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars”, where Irene spends most of the movie disguised as a man, because of course that the ONLY WOMAN Holmes could fall in love with, dresses as a man. And then we have the Robert Downey Jr. films where despite explicitly showing the romantic relationship between Holmes and Irene at the same time it implicitly shows the romantic feelings between Holmes and Watson. And then we have “Elementary” (2012-2019), “Шерлок Холмс” (2013), “Sherlock Gnomes” (2018) and the most recent “CBS Watson” (Holmes is dead but they still made sure to let us know that Irene and Holmes had an affair.)

So, it was here, in the 2000s that the adaptations really began to change and became adaptations of each other. Holmes lost his personality and became another character. The canon stories were replaced by “fanfics” of other adaptations. (Irene Adler case)

I consider that three adaptations are mainly responsible for the CURRENT image of Sherlock Holmes, and that it is from these three adaptations that the image that we have (in the contemporary era) of Sherlock Holmes was perpetuated and is the basis for the adaptations produced more recently.

The first is House M.D. (2004-2012). Although the general public does not know that it is based on Sherlock Holmes, House influenced other adaptations, especially the personality that Holmes has today. The cliché of the super-intelligent, cold, calculating, emotionless male character begins here. Even though House is not exactly that trope. The image of Holmes being insensitive to clients/patients, his arrogance and being an ASSHOLE starts in House. Including the way he treats or mistreats Watson/Wilson.

The second adaptation is the Robert Downey Jr. films as Holmes (2009-2011). He turns Holmes into an action hero, which Holmes is not, his personality does not match the canon at all (in these movies, this is not a problem). But the main influence of RDJ Holmes is Holmes as an action hero, and being SLOPPY. He dresses badly and does not keep a clean appearance. It looks like he has not showered in months. I know he STINKS.

And then we have the third adaptation, which is where the adaptations of other adaptations begin: BBC Sherlock (2010-2017). BBC Sherlock could almost be an adaptation of “The Private of Sherlock Holmes” considering the amount of similarities and references to Billy Wilder's film and the number of times Moffat and Gatiss said that this was their favorite film and INSPIRATION. BBC Sherlock is set in the modern era as Basil Rathbone's film series was then, it also makes references to the 1965 BBC series with a background appearance by Douglas Wilmer, they made reference to “Granada Holmes” in “The Abominable Bride”. And considering that RDJ Holmes is (I believe) the FIRST adaptation that decided to have Irene Adler working for Moriarty, it can be considered that Irene Adler from BBCSH, besides being an adaptation of Gabrielle from “Private Life of Sherlock Holmes”, is also inspired by Irene from the movie.

Still, controversy, but BBC Sherlock also suffers from the influence of House, mainly in Sherlock’s PERSONALITY. He has a personality quite similar to House’s.

So we have BBC Sherlock that is inspired by other adaptations and other adaptations that are inspired by BBC Sherlock. They are adaptations based on others adaptations, where the original Holmes gets lost and it is no longer possible to recognize him.

House influenced BBC Sherlock, Elementary and CBS Watson. Although Elementary suffered from the obvious comparisons to BBC Sherlock, it clearly follows a House approach style, including the opening of the show is inspired by the 1965 BBC series. And even with the influences of other adaptations, Elementary managed to maintain a personality more in keeping with Holmes, despite the sexual appeal that Elementary Holmes has (I believe it's House's fault). This Holmes has character development and takes a more serious approach to being neurodivergent and queer, and to his addiction. Unlike both House and BBCSH, which do not fully address Holmes' autistic, or his sexuality, and in the case of BBCSH at no point does it seriously address Sherlock's addiction problem.

And again, possibly influenced by Irene from the Warner Bros. films, we have an Irene Adler who works with Moriarty, and spoiler alert, not only does she work with Moriarty but is actually Moriarty herself. In addition to having a romantic involvement with Holmes, and Moriarty (her own counterpart) being an obstacle in their relationship (as in the film).

CBS Watson series has a big problem, being from the same producers as Elementary, even though Elementary managed to maintain consistency and a certain fidelity to Holmes' personality, CBS Watson ends up having almost no personality, being similar to House, and with a Watson that seems trying to be Holmes at all times. In a way, CBS Watson is an adaptation of another adaptation: House, which is inspired by Sherlock Holmes.

RDJ Holmes has influenced two Russian adaptations, “Sherlock Holmes” from 2013, where despite expectations that it was inspired by the Soviet series from 1979, the new Russian Holmes is very similar to the ways of RDJ Holmes, sloppy and careless. The series plot is that Watson narrates the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but the Holmes he writes about is not the same as the real Holmes he lives with. Even though in this context, fidelity to the canon somehow does not need to exist. It still shows the influence of RDJ's films. And again, Irene Adler here is Holmes' romantic partner.

As for the NEW Russian series “Sherlock in Russia” (2020), despite its originality and very well produced, we have an almost sloppy Holmes, long hair and a goatee, that yes, is RDJ's fault.

Being the most influential of the post-2000s adaptations, BBC Sherlock influenced several other adaptations, such as: “Miss Sherlock” (2018) which is not only inspired by BBC Sherlock, but clearly an adaptation of BBC Sherlock in a modern Tokyo setting where Sherlock and John are women. (An adaptation of another adaptation that was inspired by other adaptations). “Sherlock Untold Stories” (2019-2022) which is also heavily inspired by BBC Sherlock visually, but unlike Miss Sherlock it manages to be more original.

Moriarty the Patriot's Sherlock. Both the manga and the anime are, in my opinion, the best adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, both in the original plot and in how they adapted Moriarty and the canon to the context of the manga universe. However, Sherlock is clearly inspired by BBCSH's Sherlock. Some parts of the manga are also very similar to the events of BBC Sherlock.

And the most controversial one: Sherlock and Co. And I say this not as if they deliberately decided this. It's undeniable the impact that BBC Sherlock had on the general public's perception of WHO SHERLOCK HOLMES IS. Considering that the producer himself said that they had three audiences that they had to balance when making this adaptation, one of them being the "Johnlocker Community". Evidencing the HUGE impact that BBC Sherlock has even on the general Sherlock Holmes fandom, and yet, the producer said that he didn't know about queerbaiting when the allegations started that SH&Co. could be queerbaiting, remembering that no adaptation is obligated to make H&W a couple. This fact happened precisely because of the public's perception of how SH&Co. is similar to BBCSH and not just because it is set in the modern era. Observing the fandom, especially in the beginning, it was perceptive that SH&Co. was being treated as an extension of BBC Sherlock. So by EXTERNAL CONSEQUENCES, I will consider that SH&Co. Whether willingly or not, he suffers from the direct influence of BBCSH (and its fandom).

And then there's the Netflix problem. I haven't read the Enola books (yet), and I have no idea how Holmes is adapted in her books. But Henry Cavill Holmes is a consequence of BBCSH and RDJ. It's as if they had a son, but he clearly pulled Sherlock's hair more (BBCSH).

And Irregulars, only Netflix know where they got their inspiration from to do that. And Holmes is sloppy again, it's RDJ's fault. And taking inspiration from Sherlock in New York, Netflix's Holmes also abandons his daughter even though he says he loves the child's mother more than anything. Eleven worse, Irregulars Holmes neglects his daughter for FIFTEEN YEARS, but her mother is the love of his life and could let the world end if they could be together. And for some reason Watson loves that jerk.

(also is like benedict and jonny lee miller had a child)

And the light at the end of the tunnel came, unexpectedly, from the CW. Finally an adaptation that is not based on another adaptation, that despite the original approach, it is still noticeable that it is in fact based on the canon and does not suffer from the influence of other adaptations.

This is based on a twitter discussion, but mostly on a comment from an oomf.

English is not my first language, I am smarter in Brazilian Portuguese

[joannerowling]

robin is a character from jk's crime novels i'm assuming? i've never looked into them because that's just not my genre, but you saying tonks is a proto robin is making me want to read them. i love tonks!

Yes she is! And she's like, 50% of why you SHOULD read the books. (Like seriously there are two leads but the fandom pretty much agrees that Robin is Everything and Strike is Just grumpy Ken. We love him though.) The other 50% would be the intricate plots and mysteries + the very strong social commentary. It's less satiric and more straight-forward than HP in its depiction of British society, closer to what she did with The Casual Vacancy, but still more hopeful than that because Strike and Robin do solve the crimes they investigate (whereas TCV was just pure drama).

I understand not checking them because of the genre, that's exactly why i sat them out at first, but then i read Troubled Blood (the fifth one) in 2020 and was floored by how good it was. Like not to be dramatic but this book changed me, maybe because Robin is slightly older than me in it and i was going through relatable stuff. Her themes just hit deep, you know?

I would actually say the Strike series is pretty genre blending. If the Harry Potter books are Whodunnits disguised as fantasy satire, the Strike books are pretty much social novels, mixed with romance, disguised as crime fiction. The romance is distinctly Austenian too and brings in some much needed comic relief.

The characters are adults so it's not really a "coming of age" story but it still has aspects of it because of the character growth and healing from past traumatisms that both Strike and Robin go through. Strike's journey is about becoming a healthier, less self-destructive and more mature individual, while Robin's is about finding her own way towards self-fullfillment and accomplishment.

[general-brain-rot]

The Soul and that time you first googled “what is depression?”

I think what I’m really enjoying about the course of Deltarune so far has been my interpretation of the relationship between Kris, the protagonist, and the Soul, the embodiment of the player. The two entities are independent of each other yet inextricably linked through some Gaster mumbo-jumbo or just some greater plot we aren’t aware of at this time, but what’s important is that basically two sets of personalities are residing inside one body and that is causing, uhhhh, problems for everyone involved. Kris often tears us out of their own chest in obvious pain to seek out surprisingly mundane things without our watchful gaze and consuming control, like downing an entire warm pie left in the kitchen or absolutely demolishing multiple glasses of chocolate milk (or it’s pilk because I think that little weirdo would absolutely do that, or the far more evil option is that was alcohol and our local enby teen is in worse shape than we thought-) or playing the piano. This is a seemingly desperate bid for autonomy from the player that both breaks my heart when I think about it too hard and also intrigues me deeply considering I don’t think I’ve ever played a game with this much confusing animosity between player action and a playable character’s life. And while I’ve had a ball seeing other artists, authors, creators of all kinds expand upon the in-game Soul and Kris dynamic in ways like making ‘soul-sonas’ which are all so adorable/funny I love them, I still haven’t seen anyone discuss the potential of a metaphorical interpretation of that bond (bear in mind I may be grasping at straws in an unfinished story to reach) about the concept of having a piece of your identity directly in conflict with the rest of itself. I absolutely acknowledge that while the Soul that the player guides is *not* Kris but its own entity entirely, there’s something to be said about the commentary that this relationship gives, so without further ado…

Being a teen and trying to figure out what your deal is:

It’s unclear whether or not Kris needs the Soul to survive, but they keep us nonetheless for reasons relatively unknown to us (we’ll get to the cage stuff later), and seeing the pain they put themselves through to separate us for even a short time is hauntingly relatable. I feel as though it’s hardly a stretch to say that the majority of the people who resonate with Toby Fox’s work also have experience with challenges to their mental health, I know that I absolutely fall into that category, and Toby is just one of those creators that can articulate a lot of the nuance that comes with enjoying being alive but having to fight to stay that way. Kris’s story, while only halfway realized at the point of writing this essay, has resonated deeply with me and I think I can finally start to articulate why: the Soul feels like a physical manifestation of the parts of Kris that they feel in direct opposition with, like if all the intrusive thoughts you have and bad habits you’ve relied on and social masks you’ve manufactured and can no longer let go of had a physical presence within you instead of just being woven into your psyche.

Whether it’s chronic pain or insomnia or uncontrollable dissociation or any other plethora of things, a lot of us have some aspect of ourselves that are fundamental to our existence yet are also hostile towards ourselves, pieces of us that we are in constant battle with just because we are simply alive. And when you’ve dealt with your own mind/body/soul fighting against you for long enough, the fantasy of being “rid” of the very things that ail you become increasingly enticing. I imagine that I could probably become the most powerful person on Earth if only I could remove my dissociative habits under stress, for instance. The birdcage at the foot of their bed leaking old blood out onto the carpet serves as a stark reminder of every painful strategy both Kris and any potential player has ever used to try to free themselves from their own overbearing pieces. The Soul, the part of each of us that is sharp and intertwined in our most heavy memories and guides every customer service voiced de-escalation or white lie for the sake of comfort or tight lipped smile when all we want to do is crawl into a dark place for a while, stakes its claim over Kris in a similar yet literal way to how we on the outside of the game are familiar with the feelings. Kris removing the Soul feels like a literal representation of someone like, fighting with their brain to do something they think is fun even if they’re bad at it while their brain yells at them for being bad at the thing. It’s that type of energy to me, going to drastic and self-damaging lengths to allow other parts of your own personality to get the chance to exist past the ever-present fog of your own psyche.

It reminds me of the strategies other games like Omori use to get a wider player base to understand a particular feeling. Case-in-point, Omori forces even the most neurotypical of people to face what it feels like to make any mistake and feel like it’s impossible to forgive yourself for it, which is something many people with depression and other adjacent mental issues deal with in their lives. The game does this by forcing the player to face a seemingly unforgivable act so intense that most anybody would struggle to forgive themselves for letting it happen and convince them to forgive themselves anyway. While the game provides an extreme example to showcase it’s point, the more common instances that the game comments on are times where you may say something accidentally insensitive in conversation and tear yourself down for having said it, or if you’ve broken something precious to someone on accident and can’t bring yourself to look them in the eyes after, or literally any other accidental blunder that you feel like you need to be killed with hammers about. Even if it’s something small, the weight of their mistakes weighs as heavy on them as something catastrophic as depicted in game. It’s exaggerated symbolism, and it’s extremely effective. I think that, while maybe not the point, Deltarune is doing a fantastic job of allowing the Soul to act as that exaggerated symbolism for the struggles of navigating a contradictory and at times hostile sense of self.

Told you I’d talk about the cage stuff later, well, later is *now*:

If the in-game prophecy explored a bit in chapter 4 of the game is to be believed at face value, then Kris being described as “The Cage, with human soul and parts” paints a bleak picture of their situation but may also play into this idea of the metaphor of The Soul. If Kris is a “cage” for something, said something assumed to be the Soul, then their fate as stated directly is to not let the Soul out of their control by trapping it in a sense. By extension, to go to any length to manufacture a personality and body that will jail the Soul (a manifestation of the hostile parts of all of our own minds), which feels so similar to the experience many young adults can call back to when they were first learning about mental illnesses during their teenage years. It’s as a teen that we are first exposed to the raw world of psychology at large and can actually start to see patterns in our own behavior and begin to navigate them, and that early exploration of the self often feels a bit like losing control over our own life. One day you wake up and learn that there’s a part of yourself that you don’t fully understand but now are equipped with the knowledge that it can be detrimental to not only your own wellbeing but the wellbeing of the loved ones you surround yourself with, and all you can think to do is immediately try and trap and control that possible beast in your mind. For Kris it looks like changing their tone of voice when the words coming out aren’t exactly right, or yawning in the middle of a hurtful phrase to cut themselves off, or covering their mouth with their hand to muffle the sound of things they don’t want to speak out loud (or in Weird Route cases, biting their hand hard enough to bruise). I’ve mentioned the birdcage above but all the imagery of cages throughout the game thus far adds depth to the idea that something (like the Soul) untamed, potentially dangerous, and relatively unknown, must be contained despite how integral it is to the game, how integral it is to Kris. While perhaps not integral to survival considering how they absolutely beat the hell out of us with that hockey stick or in the continued Weird Route when they pummel us in the trashcan, they’re obviously keeping the Soul around for some necessary reason or else why stick through all the pain we’re causing them? That is likely a deeply story-entwined answer that we won’t be getting anytime soon but thinking about it through the lens of our working metaphor, it could be because Kris can’t just throw out part of their personality so simply like that. If we could just cut out the habits spawned by mental illnesses, then therapy bills would be way cheaper and look more like visits to wreck rooms rather than patient and long-term work. But that’s unfortunately not how it works and Kris, like us, has to figure out how to tame the hostile parts of themselves, because keeping it caged forever is both not sustainable and not healthy for anybody long-term.

Grats on making it to the end of my musings! Here have some mac n cheese for your efforts, we also have vegan mac n cheese if that’s your style. I like reading way too far into metaphors that may or may not exist in media I enjoy based on vibes, so if anybody else has fun thoughts on Deltarune’s many metaphors (I skipped over the big ones like freedom, hope, resilience, and teen spirit because those are already being fleshed out and are fantastic to read about) please please please share! the delicious! thoughts!!!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Yiling Band Tour!

[owlcafe]

Please feel free ignore my inane, barely-related ramblings

Perhaps the most memorable conversation of my life was with a bus driver, on the regular route I took home from university when I was a grad student. He and I had both landed a Tuesday graveyard shift, so I was the only person getting on this bus at 10pm or so. The week before, the bus had arrived late, while I was waiting, so this driver had come up to me and asked if I minded if he took his break now - apparently it was timed such that he would entitled to his break either now or after the return route. Without much thought I said something to the effect of "hell yeah brother rest up", for obvious enough reasons. The following week, it was raining, and I was scrambling to find cover in a place where I could still see the bus stop. The bus came early this time, and the driver rode up to the stop and let me on the bus early to get out of the rain. I didn't initially recognise him as the same driver, but apparently it had meant a lot to him that I hadn't flown into a rage insisting I be delivered home on schedule by an overworked and tired driver.

As you do, we got to talking, and the obvious course of the conversation was to ask what had gone wrong in our lives that we were mutually on this godforsaken bus at 10pm on a Tuesday night instead of doing literally anything else. His story was more or less what you expect - it was the best job available to him to make the kind of money you need to support a family these days. My story was simply that I'd signed on for a PhD, and with it a pretty good helping of teaching hours, including the occasional 5-9pm lab class (a process which, incidentally, more or less prevented me from having a driver's licence at the time. Don't worry about the details, but it's important to the story).

At this point, I had just begun the process of emerging from a series of self-loathing spirals - the one that stems from being an autistic child, then the one that comes from simply being 14, then the one that comes from being bisexual, then the one that comes from being non-binary, to the bonus round of growing up in a stereotypically male way while being non-binary and the unique way that makes you feel like your body is betraying you when your hair starts thinning at 19, and and fun and fresh ways these all bleed into each other. At some point in that whole whirlwind, I'd become quite convinced I wasn't going to make it out alive, despite never having any real risk to my life externally or even really internally, so my early to mid 20s were a period of discovering that I did indeed survive and now I needed a plan. This led to me falling into a lot of things just cause they sounded nice. I took a lot of odd jobs because they sounded interesting or paid well, I signed on to the PhD simply because I was asked to by my supervisor and I liked the idea of earning myself a gender neutral title, as if putting Dr [extremely common male name] on my mail was actually going to make people think twice about whether or not I was a man. This all to say, I was in the beginning of cultivating my "just a guy" self-image. It's easier, in that circumstance, to cut away the grandeur and the pompousness, because you can easily recognise them as fake. It's harder to cut away at the ways in which you undermine yourself, hate yourself, discredit yourself, because it feels like humility (and, especially in an emergent and incomplete social justice mindset, it's easy to invoke your privileges with the aesthetic of checking them, but the function of whipping yourself for "not earning" the things that you have, only further centralising your feelings as a member of the oppressor class).

To finally get to the point of all this, whenever you mention you're doing a PhD there's a pretty common social script that happens. The other person says that's very impressive, you bat it off, they say oh no I could never, and then you either make some joke about the absolute buffoons with PhDs you've inevitably met in your time in academia or just laugh awkwardly and move on. The bus driver starts the script normally, with an "oh that's very impressive" and I follow up with the canned response of "oh its not really all that, anyone could do what I'm doing". And then, I remember very precisely, he said "it seems that way to you because you can, the same way I think anyone could drive this bus because I can. But, I couldn't do what you do anymore than you could drive this bus."

And that pierced through it for me in a way that's really stuck with me. If I wanted to do the ivory tower academic thing, I could semantically dissect his statement - I could drive the bus and he could do my PhD, it's more accurate to say that the power structures surrounding us wouldn't have permitted it because I didn't have a licence to satisfy the local laws and he didn't have the educational background to pierce through the veil of graduate school exclusivity. I don't necessarily think it's literally true, what he said, but it was very powerful to me emotionally at the time. Because, in that moment in the bus at 10pm, we were both just some guy. We'd ended up in different places because of our circumstances, our identities, our choices, but we were still just some guy. In that moment, I had the same capabilities and limits as he did, just distributed differently. And for me, I'd spent most of my adolescence and much of my early 20s desperately projecting this ideal of like. A renaissance man, I guess? I needed people to believe that I was perfect, unlimited, infinitely skilled but also unflinchingly humble, lest they detect the parts of me that I assumed they would hate (because I hated them about myself). That someone I'd never really met before could so precisely and sincerely cut through it all, simultaneously denying me my instinct to degrade myself and reminding me that I am indeed subject to many and varied limitations, denying me even the privilege to bemoan that of course I can achieve these things because I'm white and middle class and so on, so I'm really not that remarkable. It really affected me. It brought me to a new level of being just some guy, and really helped me calibrate my vision of myself.

Obviously, it didn't fix everything in that single moment, but it helped me build a new frame I could use to look at things. If I started to feel shame or fear over not being able to do some particular thing that I wanted to do or felt compelled to do socially, I could remember that moment and how my path in life has given me limits as well as possibilities. And that's kept both halves of my ego in check ever since - I don't feel that I'm somehow entitled or should naturally have "lesser" skills on account of having access to "greater" ones (I can run advanced stats like nobody's business but I still can't drive a car), and I also don't feel the guilt and shame of not having certain skills that are considered basic because I have other skills that I've developed instead (yes I can't drive a car, but I can run advanced statistics).

I am once again just yapping with no real purpose but this idea really strikes a chord with me I guess. I just wanna say these things cause I want to. I don't particularly feel that there's untold wisdom or anything, it's a pretty milquetoast case of this whole thing occurring, but if anything I guess I feel compelled to pass on the wisdom I got from that bus driver that night. For better or for worse, we're all just some guy.

i really do believe that the answer to a lot of people's self hatred is not to try and reassure them that they are wonderful and okay and enough, but instead to remind them theyre a completely unremarkable regular ass person who is not the center of the universe or especially important so why would they expect themselves to be some superhuman savior. like there really is a kernel of out of control self importance at the heart of thinking youre an evil lazy piece of shit. because why would you expect you be anything but just like some guy. if you wouldnt expect the guy who works at the vape shop or your mailman or whatever to be able to do something then why would you expect yourself to? youre just some random ass person. its fine