Came into the thread expecting book recommendations, but the above is just as good!
Yes, reddit and twitter threads and medium articles are just as good as books and peer reviewed journals.
They're fine actually, but you should always investigate them yourself since no one else did. In this instance I clicked onto the reddit thread Kyuuji shared called "A Comprehensive Defense of Trans People" (which it definitely is not) and skipping the first section (since it is about gender dysphoria, not trans people) we immediately get to:
Trans Youth
Myth #1: Kids Will Change Their Minds / The Desistance Myth
Myth #3: Puberty blockers are harmful
Neither of these are myths.
All of the science of which there is barely any goes in the opposite direction. This doesn't mean gender dysphoria is fake or that trans kids are fake or that nothing should be done for either, it means these are not myths. When a writer lies to you like this you don't have to read their entire work because you can immediately be skeptical of
all of it. I will add this though, never does the "Defense of Trans People" actually defend trans people's right to exist not even through simple axioms which undergird human rights. I'll leave it to the reader to decide why it doesn't do this.
In another case, Kyuuji presents this tweet which I'm going to quote from rather than repost:
NOTES ON THE SUFFRAGE OF TRANS WOMEN
Not enough people understand that trans women received suffrage, if we ever did at all, much later than cis women.
Transphobes abuse such ignorance to encourage further oppression of trans women.
What is this basis of this radical claim?
Q1: WHY COULDN'T TRANS WOMEN VOTE?
A1: Because (1a) all meaningful transfemale social practices were criminalized and felons could not vote, and because (1b) transfemale identity was clinicalized and the mentally ill could not vote.
Q2: WHEN WERE TRANS PEOPLE GRANTED SUFFRAGE?
Voting histories are complicated. So-called "universal suffrage" (and "woman suffrage") has always been a local ideal, often a false one in practice, and never the reality. Here is a timeline for America.
But from a *purely legalistic standpoint*, trans women have never been guaranteed the right to vote & will remain in franchise jeopardy as long as our womanhood (or, for that matter, manhood) is in a state of primary emergency.
Of course, this is nonsense on its face. First, there is no evidence that trans women were historically either all felons and/or institutionalized even if we accept the unsupported claim that "all meaningful transfemale social practices were criminalized", nowhere does the author support this (even for Twitter) broad claim. Second, they show their actual hand by saying "so-called 'universal suffrage'" is "never the reality" implying they have an impossible standard in mind. Third, "state of primary emergency" explains itself from a "purely legalistic standpoint."
Here is their actual point, the elimination of prison and mental institutions entirely:
Q3: WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Because of very real historical differences in power, trans women's suffrage is unlike woman suffrage. We cannot depend on a singular law unless that law is for felons, disabled, etc. Instead we create vectors for decarceration, declinicalization, etc.
A good example of this is that some American cities *still* have travesty laws on the books, but now go unenforced for trans women. Such easing creates a situation of suffrage precarity which can only see complete resolution by abolition of the prison & mental institution system.
They've couched a bigger political agenda within the "trans rights" agenda. And Kyuuji
uncritically shares it as if it has any basis in reality to actual SUFFRAGE issues.
