Have i mentioned lately how much i hate these asshats? For the most part, they (the few that there actually are) are not only not pediatricians, the majority are not doctors of any sort. Itâs a purely political astroturf fascist mouthpiece dressing up as a professional organization. Anything thst cites them can be safely disregarded. The American Academy of Pediatrics, representing in excess of 60,000 practicing pediatricians, is the go-to source for official positions in peds. These assholes can fuck right off.
(I know you know this, @anon97585346, just clarifying for any who donât)
Gotta shut those bastards down.
WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SELF-HARM
This is a sad and complicated story. The mayor of a small town, also a pastor, has taken his own life after being outed for âsecretlyâ dressing in drag and writing fantasies. He did share pictures and writings online, though I think he tried to keep that secret from most people who knew him personally or through his public roles. He says it was âa hobby I do to relieve stressâ.
One of the first things that came to my mind is that being trans is not âa hobbyâ. He described his alter-ego as a âTransitioning Transgender Curvy Girlâ. The article below says thereâs no evidence he ever expressed anti-LGBTQ views or promoted anti-LGBTQ legislation. His church described itself as âaffirmingâ without clarifying what that meant. So I donât think itâs as simple as saying ânot a hypocriteâ. He was privately describing himself using terms transgender people use publicly, often at great risk to themselves. Hypocrisy comes in a lot of different forms.
Having said that Iâm very sad this person is gone. People do change and perhaps he was working toward merging his private and public selves. Perhaps this would have made him a happier person, reduced the stress he felt. Weâll never know, though.
Correction. Gender dysphoria isnât a hobby. Transgender is an umbrella that includes gender dysphoria, but there are people who are trans who donât have dysphoria. Non-binary is part of the transgender umbrella, and so are bigender and polygender.
Yes, there are non-binary people who donât want to be thought of as transgender, and thatâs OK because thatâs what self identifying was always supposed to mean. There are some binary people who stop calling themselves transgender after confirmation surgery because there is nothing trans about their gender anymore. Others keep calling themselves trans because they feel it still true. All of them are correct as long as they accept that their own life and experiences are not anyone elses.
On those grounds Copeland could have been transgender. The problematic part of âTransitioning Transgender Curvy Girlâ is that this pastor wasnât transitioning (although it could have been an aspiration that they felt wasnât possible for them), but this story wasnât about that, itâs about fascist harrasment of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Thank you, I appreciate the correction. As a cis guy Iâm always conscious that Iâm speaking out of turn when it comes to trans and non-binary peopleâs issues, but too often I forget to say that. I get things wrong and Iâm glad to be corrected and educated so that, hopefully, I can do better in the future.
And, yes, what this story is really about is harassment of LGBTQIA+ people, and I hope this causes even a few of the fascists to think about the harm theyâre doing.
Way back before I transitioned, when I was still figuring out who I was, I initially identified as a crossdresser. And I met other crossdressers. Some considered themselves to be transgender, some did not, and some didnât really care about labelling it. For some, it really could pretty accurately be described as a hobby. One person I met was also a pastor of a small Christian church. I donât know the denomination, but I do know he was petrified about anyone finding out. His wife did know, and she was tolerant to a point. He did once confide in me, however, that he probably was trans, and had considered transitioning when he was younger, but decided keeping his family and his church was more important to him. Iâm sad he had to make that choice (also, Iâm using he/him pronouns because the last year or so I knew him he wasnât even crossdressing anymore, he had just accepted that he was destined to live as a man so he put everything else away). I hope he survived.
Oh, I jumped in this thread to ask a question, actually, and then I got distracted by the recent comments.
I have noticed something about cis people talking about nonbinary people. Some cis people, not all. I had noticed it before, but I was watching a YouTube video earlier and it really stood out to me. This video was about a game I play, and this game recently introduced a nonbinary character, and you can actually choose from 3 different skins to display on them as you play: a more stereotypically masculine skin, a more stereotypically feminine (wellâŚsuperhero feminine, so still pretty muscular) skin, and a more androgynous skin. Itâs pretty cool, actually. Anyway, the developers made it clear that this character is nonbinary, and official references to them use they/them pronouns. But in the video I was watching (not from the developers, just someone who plays the game), the guy pretty conspicuously always refers to them by their name, rather than using pronouns, even when it makes for an awkward sentence. Like, you might use someoneâs name early in a sentence, and then just use pronouns, right? But no, he just keeps using their name. I donât think he used a pronoun once in referring to them. Has anyone else noticed this in other contexts?
And for the curious, the game is Marvel Strike Force, and the character is Vahl, an Asgardian from some alternate universe who was actually created just for the game. Theyâre not from the comics. And I just noticed, as I was going to link to a description of them on the Marvel wiki, that the wiki article also conspicuously avoids using pronouns. So weird.
I canât tell you how many people say similar things before saying theyâre transgender. Especially in earlier times.
Back in the 80âs I remember Merissa Sherrill Lynn writing an article in a community publication called The Fashion Argument ; which was about folks who said they werenât trans in anyway- they just liked fashion.
So many different defense mechanisms before acceptance for many people. Just like some gay guys used to say they werenât gay because they werenât the receptive partner in sex.
My bffs kiddo is non-binary, and I knew them before they came out, and I sometimes stumble and forget to use they/them. I can see some people being nervous that theyâll do that, and default to the the name instead of a pro-noun. 
Yeah, I suspect most people occasionally slip up. Hell, even I do with people who use they/them pronouns sometimes because the language part of my brain hasnât fully converted grammatically yet. Plus, if someone is presenting in a more stereotypically feminine or masculine way, my stupid brain that was raised in the gender binary world still reflexively wants to assign one of two genders to that person, and I have to consciously think about it for half a second to stop that. Thatâs normal. We all do that. What I was seeing seemed more deliberately wanting to avoid using they/them pronouns, but also not wanting to use he/him or she/her because he knew heâd be criticized if he did that. I dunno. It just stood out to me in this particular video. It could be me, though, reading more into it. I do have a history of overthinking things lol.
That could be the case, too, of course.
