It’s because the furry fandom, when it was founded back in the late 70’s by a gay polycule of sci-fi fans, was one of the only communities in existence that accepted openly gay and trans people. (And the only non-fetish community.) For many queer people, the furry fandom is the first place they ever feel welcome.

That link is for a previous breach against a different entity, so not the same story at all.

True, but it’s still the right thing to do. At the very least it will force some members of Congress to clearly and undeniably declare themselves as supporters of tyranny.

Unfortunately, honest questions are indistinguishable from the horde of transphobes spreading misinformation and sowing uncertainty under the guise of “just asking questions” (sealioning).

If you are genuinely curious, then I recommend starting with the Wikipedia article on puberty blockers, and also reading the one on precocious puberty which is a condition in very young children that is treated by the same drugs. (Tellingly, this usage is non-controversial and exempted from all of the new laws banning puberty blockers for trans children.)

If zero kids on puberty blockers decide not to transition that would be pretty telling.

Maybe, if that were anywhere close to what is actually happening. In reality, there are more cisgender children taking puberty blockers than there are trans children taking them, so the number of kids deciding not to transition after taking blockers is >50%. Your speculation is baseless.

Yes, I meant no negative or unintended consequences.

Thank you. It doesn’t feel like I’ve done much journeying, as I was essentially trapped in emotional stasis for most of my life and circumstances have so far prevented me from doing anything with my newfound knowledge, but at least I know which way is forward now.

If you feel like a man, like being a man, and enjoy having man parts, you’re probably a man. Your interests are not your gender, and dancing isn’t exclusive to women. Even ballet has male dancers.

Still, a little bit of exploration never hurt anybody. If you are trans, if living as another gender would make you much happier, wouldn’t you want to know sooner rather than later? And if you aren’t trans, you might still learn a thing or two about yourself that you never would have discovered otherwise. Most people go their whole lives without ever questioning their gender or closely examining what it means to them, and I think they’re missing out. There is power in truly knowing yourself.

Do some thinking. Ask more questions. Not just to others, but to yourself as well. What do you like about being a man? Can you imagine not being one? How does that image make you feel? If you could instantly become anything, with no rules or consequences, what would you pick? Don’t shut anything down; there are no wrong answers. Allow yourself the freedom to explore.

It may help you to stop thinking in the binary terms that society imposes on us. Gender isn’t just a question of Male or Female; there are many different kinds of men and many different kinds of women. There is a large area in between where the two overlap and the lines get fuzzy, and even places that aren’t on the same spectrum at all. I myself am a demigirl. My gender identity is mostly female, but also a little bit male and a little bit something else. You don’t need to feel obligated to be what anyone else is.

As for how I found out, I’ve already posted that elsewhere in this thread. It looks like you’ve gotten a lot of answers from others as well. I wish you good luck in wherever this journey takes you.

This was my experience. I was raised in a very conservative, very religious community where I was never exposed to the concept of transness. I was fully convinced that I was a boy and could never be anything but a boy. And yet, I could tell I was different from the other boys.

As I got older, that feeling turned into an ever-present sensation of wrongness. My body felt tainted, somehow. Unclean. Contaminated. It possessed an inherent grossness that could never be washed away. I lived with that feeling every day for 25 years. No medication, no counseling, no hard work ever did anything to alleviate it or the severe depression that was my typical mental state. Then a bunch of things happened all at once, and I started questioning my gender. A few days later I shaved off my beard and rediscovered what joy feels like. That’s when I knew.

I was never a boy.

Remember the NYPD who were jumped by a gang of illegal immigrants?

No, but I do remember the NYPD harassing a small group of migrants that were just minding their own business on a public sidewalk (without blocking it), ordering them to leave, and then assaulting one of them while he was attempting to comply.

Old media has become such a minefield because there’s just so much awful stuff that went over my head at the time. I’m scared to recommend anything that I haven’t rewatched/reread in the past few years.

It wasn’t all bad, though. One of my favorite TV shows is Babylon 5, a 90’s sci-fi that I watched as it aired but hadn’t seen again until late last year. All I really remembered were the cool space battles and devious political maneuvering, but it turned out to also be an incredibly progressive show. One of the main characters is first introduced while wearing robes that appear to have been partially made from a trans pride flag!

I don’t think streamers and video creators are more likely to be sex pests. You’re just more likely to hear about a sex pest if their career involves trying to be seen by as many people as possible.

Oh, sorry, I had the wrong guy. I was thinking of Dan Vasc, whose red-faced screaming meltdown is embedded in the article you linked. Must have gotten the names mixed up.

Let me try this again.

Why am I not surprised that the guy who turned out to be a pedo also gets upset about other people having pronouns?

Why am I not surprised that a guy who had a full crying meltdown over the existence of pronouns would turn out to be a pedo?

First, I would move into my own place so I don’t have to deal with the constant stress of conforming to the expectations of my bigoted family members. Then, for a while, I would probably do nothing. I’m burnt out and have a lifetime of shit to process and heal from. I need time to pick up all the parts of myself that the world has forced me to throw away.

Eventually, when I’ve gotten a little better, I’ll probably start wanting to accomplish things again. Nothing so ambitious as the dreams I used to have, but they were probably unrealistic anyway. And with my basic needs covered, I would be free to do what I find important and fulfilling instead of spending all my time making line go up for some asshole billionaire.

I’ve always wanted to write stories. I used to draw and paint, a long time ago before the depression got really bad. I’m starting to learn 3D modeling and gamedev, and it would be nice to do that just because I want to, not because I’m unable to work a regular job and am flailing for a way to pay the bills.

Maybe I would just organize get-togethers with my friends where we play tabletop games and eat food I cooked for them using produce from a little garden I made.

There’s no shortage of things to do if I’m free to pursue them.

So would a cisgender man with De la Chapelle syndrome, who has XX chromosomes, be required to compete with cis women? Would a person with XY chromosomes whose body was assigned female at birth due to Swyer syndrome or complete androgen insensitivity be required to compete against cis men?

Or would you just disqualify anyone who has any intersex characteristics, which are about as common as having red hair?

So… After they have been on HRT for a while? Periods are triggered by hormones, and there’s a lot more to a period than just bleeding. Many trans women experience cramps, bloating, mood swings, etc. on a monthly cycle. There are also some cis women who have irregular or no periods; would they still be allowed to compete or would you ban them as well?

A Pharisee (politically powerful religious faction) lawyer decides to test Jesus by asking what the most important commandment is. Jesus answers by stating two commandments: Love God wholeheartedly, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. All the other rules are based on these two.

The lawyer asks for clarification: “Who is my neighbor?” (He can’t mean everyone, right!? Some of them are, you know…)

Jesus responds by telling the Parable of the Good Samaritan: A story about a Jewish man, much like the lawyer, who is violently mugged and left to die in the street. A priest and a Levite (member of the tribe in charge of the temple), both highly respected leaders in Jewish society, pass by while pretending not to notice. The only person who stops to help is a Samaritan, a member of a hated ethnic and religious minority that had recently defiled the Jewish temple in an act of terrorism. (The Samaritans’ own temple had been destroyed a century earlier and the date of its destruction made into an annual holiday, they were hated so much.)

“Which of the three men was a neighbor to the one who was robbed?”

“The one who showed mercy to him,” the lawyer admits, unwilling to utter the name of his mutual enemy.

“Go and do likewise.”

It says to love everyone, especially the ones society hates.

I used to believe the “shitpost that got out of hand” excuse too. Let me tell you about something I witnessed a few weeks after that story first blew up:

I was watching an Overwatch esports stream because I still played back then and Blizzard was bribing us players to inflate viewer counts. It was a home game for the Dallas Fuel, so the match was taking place in Texas. Unsurprisingly, this meant the vast majority of the in-person audience was young white gamerbros with a conservative aesthetic.

It also happened to take place on International Women’s Day, so between rounds they would have one of the women who worked on Overwatch give a short speech or interview. These were generally focused on their experiences as a woman (and often racial minority), the value of diversity and tolerance, etc. I remember one of the people they brought in to speak was Anjali Bhimani, an American of Indian descent who voiced the character Symmetra.

Every single time they announced one of these presentations, a large number of audience members (Remember: white gamerbros in Dallas, Texas) would immediately raise one arm, make the OK sign with their hand, and wave it around rapidly while frowning. I had never seen anything like it, and given the context it was obvious what they were doing it for.

Blizzard banned use of the gesture during esports matches a few days later. The subreddit was predictably full of posts like yours, downplaying what had happened and ridiculing the ban as an overreaction to a stupid prank. Maybe it really was just a prank at the start, and I don’t know if they’re still doing it now, but there was definitely a time when fascists were using the OK sign as a dogwhistle and relying on the “media fell for a 4chan prank” story for plausible deniability.

If I use my Persuasion skill to help someone think their way through a problem, is that a “mind-effecting affect”?