u/BrennanIarlaith

It's incredibly frustrating watching her absolutely nothing statement about "intractable medical conditions" be paraded by countless media institutions, including nominally queer-positive groups like Pink News, while her constant, daily stream of cruelty and hatred and bile is completely ignored. It's really frightening that she's able to compel the silence of activist organizations like Amnesty International, and to sue newspapers for libel when they report what is, quite simply and plainly, the truth. She clearly believes the weight of her fortune and cultural influence can allow her to bend, if not reality itself, then at least the consensus perception of reality, and for the time being she seems to be right.

On the subject of trans rights, Rowling is *just* a bully. She has no expertise to speak of; no education whatsoever in therapy, psychology, gender studies, queer history, or biology, no in-person experience with actual trans people, no shared community with us. She is profoundly uneducated and deeply indoctrinated. Everything she says about trans people is complete drivel, absolutely worthless in intellectual value. She's a howling vortex of misinformation and ignorance. And yet, somehow, it's her opinions on trans people that are given weight. Moreso than doctors, therapists, medical institutions, and *trans people ourselves.*

I know I'm just griping, I just...needed space to vent. Things feel pretty low lately.

Hi folks. I'm looking for some good Forgotten Realms lore video recommendations to feed my hyperfocus. In particular I want to avoid AI videos. Any recommendations?

I have an acquaintance, a cis woman, who has a moderately sizeable tiktok audience focused on leftist politics. We don't see each other often (different cities), so a lot of life updates come from her very frequent tiktok videos. After the partial release of the Epstein files her videos became increasingly granola-spiritual (which is fine, IMO, I'm a bit woo myself), but also increasingly conspiratorial in her thinking, accepting as fact some of the wilder and less-evidenced claims regarding the files while making unsubstantiated claims about things like devil worship among the elites. She also started posting more about cepebrating the power of the womb, which is fine--cis women should absolutely be encouraged to celebrate their bodies--but a lot of these posts leaned uncomfortably into bio-essentialism. We haven't talked much over the last year, partly since health issues have impacted my ability to travel and partly because I haven't really been on tiktok. But I logged back in the other day and a lot of her recent videos have been about trans women, and they're, like, pretty dodgy. Like, talking about how she's noticed some trans women went through an edgelord phase before transitioning and how she worries we're still carrying that misogyny into queer spaces. They're not...not *damning,* but they're worrying in light of everything else. And the comments are full of terfs who are using the same rhetoric I've seen them use before to radicalize cis feminists. Her most recent video started with "men and trans women don't like me because I talk openly about the power of the female womb" and I just...haven't been able to bring myself to watch the rest.

This person isn't a super close friend, but I like and respect her, and she's always been very respectful and inclusive of me as a trans woman. I've done boudoir modeling for her (she's a photographer), we've gone skinny dipping together, she included me in a women's retreat a year ago. I was desperately hoping her mix of conspirituality and womb-centered feminism wouldn't lead her into this bio-essentialist trap. I don't want to lose another friend to fucking terfs *again.* Does anyone have any advice for how to talk to her about this before they get their hooks deeper into her? I hate confrontation but I feel like I have to do something.

When it comes to the 1st Dornish War--really *any* of the Dornish Wars--my sympathy lies entirely with Dorne, who have every right to resist their violent occupiers by any means necessary. Rhaenys and Meraxes were killed while cheerfully carrying out the fantasy equivalent of a napalm run, and I'll shed no tears for them. But it does sadden me some that the only Targaryen sibling who personally suffered for their ambition was Rhaenys, who had little interest in warfare, not her brother who orchestrated their bloody conquest or her sister who so enthusiastically prosecuted. None of the Conquerors are innocents, but Rhaenys was the least guilty among them, and her siblings deserved her fate far more than she.

I'm trans, and very involved in local trans activism and organizing. I deal with transphobia on a daily basis and shrug it off pretty easily. But...Rowling's sheer, vile cruelty, the crowing, almost childish glee she takes in destroying the lives of trans people, her smug self-righteousness when called out as the hateful bully she is...it makes me feel genuinely sick to my stomach. She's poison. And I think I need to step away from the well for a bit.

I know there's no need to announce my departure. But I really do appreciate this space, and the people who document her madness. It's important and worthwhile. I'm sure I'll be back in a while once the foulness leaves my tongue. Just wanted to let you all know that I appreciate you folks.

Remember: trans women are women. Trans men are men. Nonbinary people are nonbinary. Let none say otherwise 🏳️‍⚧️

So I've been my faction's martial for a while, and I've noticed no other lords in my faction have called a tournament or a feast during that time. Recently I surrendered a battle in order to reload, and before I reloaded, my faction leader stripped me of Marshal and then immediately thereafter another lord in my faction called a tourney at his city. Does me being marshal prevent other lords from calling tourneys? And if so, can I as marshal get lords to call them?

I don't know what else to say. The political weapons wielded by JK Rowling and those under her sway are ripping the heart out of trans rights in the UK. It feels increasingly silly to discuss the numerous foibles of her (admittedly very shitty) writing, when her political lobbying is *killing my siblings.*

What the fuck can we do about this woman? What hope is there for us as trans people when the wealthiest dickshit author in the world decides "I'm going to spend this decade murdering a tiny minority group," and the world just...lets her? Just fucking lets her lie and sue and lawsuit us to death? She's using her money to force us into rape centers. That's what male prison is for trans women. Fucking rape camp. Look up v-coding if you don't believe me.

I know I'm crashing out right now. Delete this if it's not OK. Idc anymore.

By the end of Act One, all the traditional roles of a Rogue Trader's retinue and officer core are filled except two--the Master of Whispers and the Arch Militant. So who do we think would be best suited to fill those roles, out of our companions or any NPCs throughout the game?

It's a widely known and criticized fact that Rowling intended her werewolves to be an allegory for sufferers of HIV/AIDS. In this context, the character of Fenrir Greyback takes on a disturbing metatextual context. Fenrir is a deeply predatory man who intentionally spreads his disease to children, often stalking them in advance. He also leads a faction radical anti-assimilationist werewolves who seek the overthrow of the neoliberal establishment of the magical world (an establishment which openly persecutes werewolves, specifically depriving them of employment opportunities). It's difficult not to see Greyback and his faction as a fearful demonization of the radical queer liberationist groups that rose during the height of the AIDS crisis--organizations who we now know Rowling despises and dreads. This is, these days, a pretty widely known and criticized element of Rowling's writings. But fans of Rowling will point out that she also writes the heroic werewolf Remus Lupin, and that if she really hated the queer community, she wouldn't have such a positive figure. But Lupin, in my opinion, is an even more disgusting and revealing look at her view of the LGBTQ+ community.

Lupin is a werewolf who has consistently been denied a career in education because he's seen as a contagion risk to students (echoing ongoing conservative opposition to queer and trans people in teaching roles). Dumbledore, an avatar of centrist-liberal controlled opposition to the establishment, takes a risk by hiring Lupin, rationalizing that his condition is managed by medication. Lupin becomes a beloved teacher for his competence and care. But eventually, despite his medical assistance, his disease rears its head, and becomes an immediate and deadly risk to his students, one only avoided by violently chasing Lupin away. The next day, Lupin resigns to dave Dumbledore from embarrassment, saying this:

"This time tomorrow, the owls will start arriving from parents. They will not want a werewolf teaching their children. And after last night, I see their point. I could have bitten any of you. That must never happen again."

Later, Lupin risks his life to (unsuccessfully) try and sway members of Greyback's radical anti-assimilationist faction back to supporting an establishment which despises them, an establishment which Lupin believed is right to despise them. He eventually dies defending that establishment.

If lycanthropy is a metaphor for AIDS, and for queerness more broadly, this, then is Rowling's "Good Queer." A highly competent and caring individual who believes he owes his whole existence to the few mainstream people who have treated him with basic human dignity. A man perpetually victimized by an establishment which denies him the opportunity to teach because it believes that his presence will contaminate and corrupt young students. A man who gracefully relinquishes his rights and his place in society because he realizes, wisely, that the establishment is right--that he is indeed a contagion risk to children. A man who willingly gives up the rights he was so kindly granted by mainstream liberals, so they're not forced to take away those rights themselves. A man who risks and eventually sacrifices his life to protect the establishment which rightly persecuted him from his anti-assimilationist counterparts who are unwilling to recognize how just and necessary their oppression is. A man who is uplifted not by systemic changes to a society which oppresses him, but by the personal kindness of individual mainstream people, and who is wise enough to know that to push back against that societal oppression would be to place children in danger.

Rowling has, on occasion, mentioned an unnamed trans woman friend who agrees with all of her (Rowling's) transphobic points, stays in her lane, and never tries to push for societal change. Whether or not this woman is imaginary (I personally suspect she's a highly embellished and idealized version of an acquaintance Rowling once may have had), she must clearly be someone like Lupin. In Lupin, we see the blueprint for acceptable queerness in Rowling's eyes. To be a Good Queer, or a Good Trans, we must willingly accept our place as second-class citizens so as to mitigate the risk of our monstrous and corruptive natures, which no medication can ever change.

I think Lupin makes me more sick than Greyback does, in the context of this analogy.

Hi all. 36 year old trans woman here. started transitioning in my early thirties, four years ago. It feels like being alive for the first time. It's a wonderful experience tempered by the pain of knowing I spent three decades in a grey, empty nothing because I couldn't be who I was.

I got broken up with today. Ended a year-long relationship that I had really high hopes for. Being with this woman gave me butterflies in my stomach for the first time since I was a kid. Now...more than anything, I feel old. At thirty-six years old, the idea of dating again just makes me feel sad and empty. It feels too late to find someone, start something. And I feel this tearing grief because I wasted my younger years being something I'm not. Grief for the young woman I never got to be.

Idk. I hope this is an okay space to process this.

Hi all! I want to do a lavender-themed photoshoot, so I'm looking for a public park that has lavender plants. Any recommendations?